The Curse of Sea And Land
by Kairos27
Summary: AU, 1697-1710. The record of how an orphaned girl named Santana fell in love with the sea and became the feared Spanish privateer, the Accursed Santiago López y Viguera.
1. Preface

**_The Curse of Sea And Land_  
><strong>

Preface_._

Several years ago, I attended a colleague's wedding in San Juan, Puerto Rico. During the course of the festivities, I made acquaintance with several of the island's residents whom my colleague had befriended during his previous stay on the island. One of them was a history professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Dr. Juan Saucedo. Upon learning that we shared professions, he asked after my primary area of study.

"European colonization in the Caribbean during the seventeenth century, with a focus on the power struggle between the English, Spanish and Dutch, pre-Spanish Succession period," I replied promptly.

"Ah! then certainly you are familiar with Captain Miguel Henríquez," he said, and I acquiesced to my familiarity with the famed Puerto Rican privateer. We spoke of him for a good half an hour, until Dr. Saucedo's thoughts and conversation began to drift, much like a piece of wreckage is borne gently away by the waves on the beach not more than a mile from where we were conversing. His eyes were very far away before they returned to me and he said, "Lately my research has found itself preoccupied with, and continually frustrated by, another figure in the same time period. Perhaps you know something of El Maldito López?"

The name was familiar; I recognized the name in several documents that from the archives at the University of South Florida. "Are you speaking of Santiago López y Viguera?"

"I am indeed speaking of Santiago López," Dr. Saucedo said. Although López was almost always mentioned briefly in the handful of ships' logs and diaries where his name appeared, I had read that a detailed description of the man appeared in a manuscript penned by the 18th-century historian José Martín de Noyola. Only two copies of the manuscript existed; Dr. Saucedo, I was soon to learn, owned the original text.

"Why do the manuscripts refer to him as El Maldito?" I inquired. "What did he do to warrant being called 'accursed'?"

"Local legend bestowed it upon him. In fact, a good portion of what Noyola wrote about him are merely his transcriptions of the stories about López, but at first glance, they seem to be of little use to the historian because they are so steeped in myth," Dr. Saucedo told me, but because our time was running short, he could not say much more than that. He generously offered to send me some of his materials on Santiago López, which I could peruse at my leisure upon my return to New York. I agreed, because the information might be relevant to my research interests.

Several weeks later, I received the materials in a package along with a letter from Dr. Saucedo, detailing the contents of the package with a interesting disclaimer: "Prepare to be surprised, my dear friend."

And I was, indeed.

Noyola depicts himself as a Pausanias, traveling the Caribbean as he visits the various fortresses and ports of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, following the near-mythical trail of El Maldito López, so called because all of the ships he had served on as a sailor had all been sunk or otherwise lost, with López being the sole survivor. Privateering as his livelihood proved surprisingly successful - the one ship under his command was never lost to the sea, which only served to increase his myth. He was rewarded handsomely by the Spanish Crown, both with titles and even an estate in Spain, and his fame grew to the extent that his story was told about him in England and the Netherlands. Apparently they, too, feared the supernatural providence that seemed to surround him; Noyola's account includes some of the stories told about him by the English and Dutch, one of which reads:

_Even his countrymen call him the Cursèd One, this Don Lopez who commits piracies for the Spanish Crown, so called because he is said to have been wrecked ten times & saved by Mer-Maids for all ten when he should have died; & it is the Same favour that prevents the ship under his command to be sunk. Some say his only living Crew are: 2 Jews, an old man & a young man; also a giant of a Cossack, & 2 Slaves, 1 being the slave of the older Jew and the other a Woman Lopez had liberated from a slave ship bound for Saint-Domingue; the very Fishes themselves make up for the rest. It is said that during the taking of a Dutch ship, the captain asked Don Lopez, What manner of a man are you? & Lopez replied, No man is like me, before putting an end to the unfortunate sailor._

Noyola writes that the last line in this account was interpreted to mean that López was a female, especially in the later stories circulated throughout the Caribbean in the middle of the 18th century. These stories were especially popular in the Spanish ports, the most representative of which Noyola recorded in his account.

In any case, Noyola's trail came to a dead end in Havana, where López was said to have sailed off alone in his sloop, ostensibly headed for Seville. López never made it to Seville; his estate, titles, and vast wealth disappeared along with him. and just as his life was shrouded in mystery, even during his lifetime, so too was his disappearance. Less than five years after the conclusion of Noyola's manuscript, López was all but forgotten.

As an historical account, Noyola's manuscript was useful in a cartographic and cultural sense; outside of that, it seemed to be little use historically, what with all of the fanciful embellishments given to Santiago López over the centuries.

Nevertheless, the preciseness of Noyola's storytelling sparked an irrepressible urge within me to share this story with the world, and that was when I understood why Dr. Saucedo had been so invested in the study of this shadowy figure. To this end, Dr. Saucedo generously gave me permission to compile all of his research findings and publish them as a complete text on the mysterious life of this semi-legendary Spanish privateer. I have tried to do justice to Noyola's own account and have done my best to include the scattered records that do not appear in his manuscript into a fully-orbed portrait of the legend who was Don Santiago López y Viguera, and I hope, dear reader, that I have succeeded.

Rachel B. Berry  
>July 19, 2017<br>Julius Silver Professor of History, New York University

* * *

><p><em>To my friend<em>

**_L. Quinn Fabray_**

_In gratitude for her tireless friendship,_

_I dedicate this book._


	2. The Birth of the Wolf

_**The Curse of Sea And Land**_

Chapter 1: Birth of the Wolf.

_The only story that treats the birth and early childhood of Don Santiago López y Viguera was recorded in 1715 by José Martín de Noyola, who named the narrative 'The Birth of the Wolf' in his manuscript. This account is one of many that claimed that López was actually a female. The story places her age at 30 when she vanished in the Atlantic "five years past", and claims that she was born on St. Anne's Day, which is July 26. Therefore, her birthdate is surmised to be July 26, 1680. Her father, named Ignacio in the story, was a shipwright who repaired boats in the harbor in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As Noyola tells it: _

"This was how I heard the story: I went down to where the _Dulcia_ was harbored at Santo Domingo, and sat with an old sailor who was watching as it was loaded with its goods. Upon my admittedly tiresome questioning, he said to me roughly, 'Young man, why should I tell you about Don Santiago, who went to his final judgment these five years past? What can I say, other than he was truly no man? A woman, she was; daughter of a shipwright called Ignacio. Of that I have no doubt. Thirty years was too long for her on the earth.'

'Where did this Ignacio reside?' I asked.

'The harbor of San Juan,' said the venerable old sailor. 'An honest man; his father was a shipwright before him, and his father's father.'

'And what of Don Santiago's mother?'

'She died giving birth to the child.' The sailor pointed upwards at the sky, as if to silently signify the mother's piety to me, and her heavenly reward, in direct opposition, it seemed to me, of where he expected her ill-fated child to be. 'The child was born on St. Anne's Day. They say that the child's father was filled with grief at the death of his wife, and forgot to have a priest baptize the child. Her true Christian name is unknown, the Lord only knows if she ever had one. They say that that is why she was cursed from the start.'

What he said about the child not being baptized could well have been true. I found no record of a SantiagoLópez in the baptismal records of the churches in San Juan, or any López born on or within days of St. Anne's Day. Perhaps, without a mother to nurse, they expected that the child would not survive. 'But surely, someone must have nursed the child?'

'That is not part of my story,' the sailor snapped, shaking his wrinkled finger in my face. 'This child was not like the others; as honest as her father was, he was poor and could not think being able to scrounge up a decent dowry to marry her off. And yet, when his grief passed, he desired to keep his child. So he raised her as he would have raised a son and taught her the art of shipbuilding and the ways of the sea. But one day, he was struck with fever and died when his child was fourteen. With nowhere else to go, she disguised herself and sought a place on the ships that passed to and fro in San Juan's port. The first ship that took her on was the unfortunate _La Serena_. On her very first trip, the ship was wrecked off of Cornuall [Cornwall], swept off course by a terrible storm. None survived, save for López.'

'The mermaids?'

'So the story says. The child made for a most beautiful boy and they were enamored, to the point where they implored the sea, their lord and home, to destroy the ship and deliver this boy to them. Yet somehow he made his way from that wreck to Seville, and was soon on the _Malaspina_ headed for Veracruz. It, too, was lost before it even reached its destination. Every ship López boarded was wrecked or sunk.'

When I returned to San Juan, I scoured all of the documents available on the _Serena_ and the _Malaspina_, which were the only two of the rumored ten ships, which López' curse had caused to sink, to be named in any account. I confirmed that the first had indeed been sunk off the Islas Sorlingas, and the second had been lost near la Florida, as the old sailor had intimated to me. Yet the list of sailors and passengers was, to my great frustration, lost."

_The records from _La Casa de Contratación_ in Seville indicate that the ship _La Serena_ was indeed lost in 1695, matching the timeline given to us by Noyola's storyteller. The ship was blown off course by freak winds, and was finally destroyed by a storm that swept it into the "Islas Sorlingas", or the Isles of Scilly, which were already infamous as the site of many previous shipwrecks. The Spanish, of course, were unable to recover anything lost in the wreck, as their bitter rivals, the English, would have had something to say about that. The same records show that the _Malaspina_ had managed to successfully make its way across the Atlantic before being struck by a startling sudden hurricane in the Caribbean. The contents of the wreck were later salvaged by Spanish explorer Hernando Chavez__, who, it is said, learned of the location of the wreck from __López herself. _

* * *

><p><strong>The first time it happened<strong>, Santana awoke to the sound of singing. The song was nothing like any tune she had ever heard before, in a throaty, strong voice.

There was a throbbing pain in her side – yes, she remembered a sharp piece of wreckage embedding itself in her side as the ship was smashed to bits before her darkening eyes . Her mouth was dry and gritty, nothing like the sand beneath her, which was wet and sticky – meaning that the tide had not gone out yet. As if on cue, the water rushed back in and filled her mouth with sea foam, effectively shaking her out of the daze she was in.

"Good, you're awake. I can't stay out here much longer." It was not Spanish, it did not sound like Spanish in such a strange voice, or any language Santana knew, really – but she understood it all the same. She tried to open her eyes, and was temporarily blinded by the sting of the salt water blended with the high sun's glare.

"Who are you?" Santana croaked, her voice parched. "Who are you?"

"I have to go," the voice replied.

Santana thought she felt a cool, wet hand pressing against her cheek, but then it was gone. She finally succeeded in opening her eyes this time and scrambled to a drier patch of sand so that she could wobble to her feet. But when her eyes finally regained focus, she saw nothing but a glimmer of gold against the waves breaking against the craggy shoreline.

She was several thousand miles away from anything familiar or friendly – and her only thought was that she _had_ to return to the sea, if only to find out who had rescued her.

**The second time it happened**, she was still conscious enough to feel strong arms pulling her from the morass of the shipwreck, while valiantly trying to keep Santana's head above water until they reached a sandbar. Santana crawled onto the driest patch of sand within reach and turned her bleary gaze around to look for her rescuer.

"It's you again. We should stop meeting like this," a familiar voice chirps, and Santana's heart seizes up in her chest.

"I found you," she says, and her voice rises sharply. "I found you!"

The reply is tinged with amusement. "Do you always have to say things twice?"

She was reclining in the surf, naked – or what Santana could see of her, anyway. Her hair was gold, but brighter than the gold that she'd seen in the ship cargoes headed for to Spain. Behind the golden curtain of hair were two bright blue gemstones of eyes, crinkling at the edge as she smiled guilelessly at Santana. She looks barely older than Santana herself. "Who are you and what are you called?"

"Sant—Santiago."

The mysterious girl frowns. "That's not your name."

Santana scowls. "Who says it isn't?"

"Because that is a boy's name, and you are not a boy. You're too pretty to be a boy, so you are clearly a girl. I can see you. Who are you really?"

"Tell me who you are, and I'll tell you who I am."

For a moment, the mysterious girl hesitated, and then slowly lifted herself out of the water into a standing position. Her legs were clothed in a lacy pattern of sargassum –legs that she apparently did not have much experience using, as she stumbled with the onrushing tide. Without thinking, Santana rushed forward to support her, catching her around her bare waist.

The girl leaned forward and whispered in Santana's ear, "_Bertaèyn._" And then she stilled, her cool hands loosely wrapped around Santana's shoulders, waiting for Santana's response.

"Santana. That is my name."

With a happy smile, the other girl suddenly slipped like a fish from Santana's grasp and bounded towards the water. "I knew it. I _will _see you again, Santana!" she cried, before plunging into the water and disappearing.

**The third time it happened**, Santana was a little more prepared, and escaped the doomed ship on a lifeboat before it could sink. She had repeated the name over and over in her head until it morphed into something completely unrecognizable. _Bertaèyn. __Bretaña. Brittany_. The name, spoken in that voice that could not really be bound to any language, now sounded like treasonous English in her head; and that was unpatriotic, to say the least.

Her lifeboat ran aground on a coral reef, but the water was shallow enough for her to swim to a rocky outcropping without much trouble. As she climbed up to it, someone was already there, sitting with her back to Santana.

"Oh, it's you," Brittany said cheerfully, and in all honesty, Santana should have been prepared for the fish's tail that flicked towards her in greeting. It glittered like newly minted coin under the light.

Santana grips at the rock beneath her. "Was it you, then, who cursed all of the ships I was on?"

"I am the sea's," the mermaid replied placidly, "and the sea is mine. So, yes. I did this because I want to see you."

"Why would you want to see me?" Santana burst out, without really thinking. "You healed me the first time – I know it was you – and you have been following me and sinking every ship I have been on. That's three of them, now. If everyone knew I survived three wrecks, they would either call me a miracle or call me accursed. And sailors are too superstitious to call _me_ a miracle, especially if they knew I am not a boy...isn't your job to enchant sailors into the water and drown them?"

Brittany looked over her shoulder at Santana for a long moment before patting the flat patch of rock next to her. "Sit with me. I give you my word I will not harm you."

"You have harmed me enough," Santana grumbled. "And how am I to trust a mermaid's word?"

"Have you ever heard a mermaid give anyone their word? No? Then you see we don't give our word lightly. Come here."

Despite her better judgment, Santana slowly crawled over and sits down next to Brittany. Brittany placed her pale, slender hand in the small space of rock between them. Santana averted her gaze and looks down at her own raw, brown hands, trying not to think too much. Brittany broke the silence first. "You're not as happy to see me as I am to see you."

"Forgive me if I don't understand why you need to wreck every ship I am on in order for us to see each other."

"But surely you wanted to see me, or else you would never keep returning to the sea." The mermaid said this with the utmost certainty, and Santana scowled darkly, annoyed at being read so easily. "The sea is both nurturing and destructive in its nature. So I must be, too. I couldn't save you without leaving others to die. It is not my way."

"You saved me," Santana said, and it was not a question. She knew the truth of it.

Brittany nodded. "You were at death's door, that first time. And you would have died, if not for me. I could have left you alone, but I didn't…I couldn't bring myself to leave. That's why I had to leave so suddenly when you awoke. I had been away from the water too long…and then," she added with a bright smile, "I decided that I wanted to see you again."

"Yes, I did," Santana suddenly ground out. "I did return to the sea after that. To find you, to seek you out. I think I always knew who – what – you were, even before now. I thought that perhaps you had cursed me. But that didn't stop me. It wouldn't stop me."

"Would you stop seeking me, now that you know my name and what I am?"

Santana looked up at her – it was a mistake. Brittany's startlingly blue eyes would have accepted only one response. A response that Santana knew she would have given anyway. There was no escape.

"No."

**The fourth time it happened**, the ship was sunk off the Barbary Coast. The ship's navigator and several of the other sailors had pointed their fingers at her, shrieking, "_The devil! The devil!_" right before a wave rushed up the side of the wounded ship and swept them away.

When she met Brittany on an abandoned Maltese beach, she sat silent and angry as Brittany moved to take her hand. She jerked away from the sympathetic gesture and stormed off, but she knew that Brittany knew that she would return.

**The fifth time it happened**, people had already begun to notice that certain disaster seemed to follow the fresh-faced young man with the browned skin and thick dark hair everywhere he went. At the first ship Santana inquired at, the captain turned a nasty eye towards her and scoffed. "We'd sink this ship ourselves before we'd let you board it," and waved her away curtly. The people witness to this small confrontation whispered amongst themselves; Santana heard them all too well as she passed them.

"That's him! Santiago López!"

"He looks so young. He hasn't even a beard!"

"I hear every ship he boards is cursed to sink to the bottom of the ocean, because he would have died as an infant had not his father struck a deal with the Devil to save his son's life."

The only option left open to Santana, then, was to stow away.

She snuck onto a smuggler's ship, which had the great misfortune of being stopped, raided, and then scuttled by an English naval warship near Nassau. Santana was captured and dragged to the deck with the other surviving smugglers, whose eyes widened in fear at the sight of her. They whispered, "Ha! So you're here too, _maldito_! Do us a favor and rid us of this English warship too, won't you, boy?"

The British officer shouted something in English, possibly to shut them up – when Santana turned to spit at him, a booted foot shot out and kicked her in the stomach. She gasped for air and crumped — the moment her body hit the deck, gale-force winds suddenly struck the side of the ship and the pulled a dark curtain of clouds across the previously bright blue sky. The smugglers shrieked, "Shouldn't have kicked the boy, you English dogs! This is it! The Devil's coming for our souls!"

As the storm descended upon the ship, Santana took advantage of the general confusion to break free and make her escape. Without even looking back, she leapt over the railing and dove into the violently churning water, knowing that someone was there and ready to meet her. The waves pulled her to a safe distance from the foundering vessel, and her hand closed around another familiar hand that led her away.

* * *

><p><em>Noyola records several narratives, both of English and Spanish origin, that claim that "El Maldito López" (or the "Demon Boy-Spaniard", as the later English stories called him) was responsible for the sinking of a Royal Navy ship, which a day's sail from Nassau. The Spanish ones, Noyola claims, are more contemporary than the English ones, which are unsurprisingly bitterer in tone. Noyola writes:<em>

"The English paid no notice of the growing notoriety of Santiago López until well after the sinking of one of their Navy's ships, which, as it is told, captured and sank the smuggler's vessel on which López was a stowaway. Desperate and facing certain death, the surviving smugglers begged López to save them by calling upon '_the Devil who follows your shadow_' to sink the English ship, so as to avoid execution. This López agreed to, and almost immediately a storm descended upon the mighty ship and it was swamped, yet none of the British sailors or the remaining smugglers lived to tell the tale. Only López, of course, escaped.

Yet the English did not hear of López until the above story was spread amongst the smugglers in Trinidad; English smugglers repeated the story until it reached the ears of an English Royal Navy Lieutenant, William Harrison, who was the first in the English navy to hear the name and spread it as a harmless piece of folklore."

_Upon inspection of the records of the Royal Navy, one will find the record of the _HMS Essex_, reportedly lost at sea in 1697 while patrolling the Bahamian coastline. Almost nothing is known of the aforementioned Lt. William Harrison, who seems to have had an unremarkable naval career. He died in 1712 and is buried in Lancashire, England._

* * *

><p><strong>The sixth time it happened<strong>, it was a Portuguese galleon that met its watery end – and Santana awoke with her head resting in the neat, elegant coil of Brittany's fish-tail. This time she ached all over; her lips were cool and tingling.

"I kissed you," Brittany said matter-of-factly. "It saved you. You almost died again."

"Wouldn't have happened if you didn't sink the ship," Santana retorted weakly. She squeezed her eyes shut against the screams of the doomed sailors still ringing in her ear. If the Portuguese sailors still didn't know about her, they would soon. "Why do you keep doing that?"

"Why do you keep sailing?" Brittany replied calmly.

Santana knew that their answers were the same: _I wanted to see you_. "I wanted to see you," Brittany said, gazing at Santana thoughtfully. Santana swallowed painfully as pale fingers threaded into her tangled, salt-caked hair, and drifted down to the browned skin of her neck.

**The seventh time it happened**, after the Spanish frigate she was on under an assumed name smashed into the reef near the Dry Tortugas, Santana worked up the nerve to say it back.

* * *

><p><em>Noyola expressed his doubts as to the veracity of the accounts that said Santiago López was responsible for the sinking of ten ships in the span of two years, from 1695 to 1697. However, almost everyone he approached with this question was in agreement that López was on all ten of those ships, and that his presence was the deciding factor that caused their sinking. When he asked them how López managed to survive all ten:<em>

"The majority believes, and this is reflected in the sheer number of stories I have recorded that say thus, that Santiago López found favor with the merpeople that roam the open seas, and they were enamored of him. Yet I also heard an account from an old ship's pilot in Veracruz that claimed that López actively sought the mermaids' company, and they would summon storms to destroy the ships he was on so that they might spend some time alone with him. 'They are destructive in their nature,' he said to me, 'and for every time they saved López from a wreck, they would exact the price of several dozen souls, or more, as the case may be.'

'So López continued to seek out the mermaids, even with this condition?' I asked.

'He loved a mermaid,' the pilot said to me. 'Any man who loves a mermaid is most accursed, or simply, absolutely mad.'"


	3. The Bargain

_**The Curse of Sea And Land**_

Chapter 2: The Bargain

_During his travels in the Caribbean, Noyola searched for people who would have known or interacted with López in order to add eyewitness accounts to his growing manuscript. It was not outside the realm of possibility to locate such people, because Noyola began this work a mere five years after López disappeared in the Atlantic. Noyola found most of his witnesses in San Juan, where López was supposed to have grown up. At the time, the residence where Santiago was raised still existed in what is now the __Ballajá sub-barrio of Old San Juan. Upon learning of this, Noyola took it upon himself to visit the residence and seek out Ignacio's former neighbors and associates:_

"That Ignacio was impoverished was immediately apparent to me from the less than impressive size and condition of Don Santiago's childhood home. It was tiny and most malodorous. The current occupants, a fisherman's family with several young children, were unaware that one of the most feared seamen of our day had spent a childhood in their residence. Indeed I did not blame them for their ignorance, as they were too busy trying to eke out a living to listen to fabulous stories that had no relevance to their daily life, and they only refrained from bodily removing me from the premises after I had proffered them some money for their pains.

After this, I found a group of venerable old men gathered in the cathedral square and they readily agreed to talk to me. One of them, a former shipwright himself, had worked alongside Ignacio in his younger days. 'It was obvious to us why all those ships sank with that child on it,' he said. 'Everyone knows a woman on a ship is an ill omen.' The others voiced their agreement.

'So you, too, say that López was a woman, then!' I cried.

'Ignacio had no sons, only one daughter,' the man said to me. 'As honest men who knew the child's father, we can swear before God that your Don Santiago was a woman.'

'What was her name, if she could not be called Santiago?'

The men looked at each other meaningfully, as if in silent conference, until my shipwright spoke again. 'If the child had a Christian name as a little girl, Ignacio never called her such in our hearing. He was desperate to raise her as a boy, with the thought that perhaps this would make his wife's death worth something – for you know a boy is worth infinitely more comfort than a girl, and Ignacio had not the means to marry off a daughter – although the child must have learned sooner or later that she was not a boy, and her father implored her to bind her breasts. We tried to talk him out of it, but at the last, we decided that it was his life and his child to raise, and that was all that we could do. The child grew up as a boy, and lived as one. Ignacio taught the child as much as he could about the ways of the sea, but when he died, she hired herself out to the first ship that would have her on.'

I asked, 'So do you believe that López sought the company of mermaids?'

'Mermaids!' he shouted. 'The Devil himself was more likely, if you ask me. That mermaid nonsense is nothing but foolish talk. Everyone knows a mermaid would rather drown a man than keep company with him.'"

_Further along in the account, young __Santiago López was described by the witnesses as a slight yet strong and agile figure at fourteen, with tanned skin and dark, wavy hair. He was always depicted in stories as clean-shaven, which made him appear perpetually young. In retrospect, this might be considered to support the other stories' supposition that López was a female. However, most contemporary stories attributed this to his apparent curse, claiming that it also kept him young. Other stories claimed that the mermaids had shown López the location of the Fountain of Youth._

* * *

><p>"There is a Fountain of Youth," Brittany said conversationally as she flicked a blonde lock of hair over her damp, pale shoulder. Her legs – which Santana had rarely had the opportunity to see, were folded neatly on the rock in front of her, as if she did not know what to do with them. "It won't work if you are looking for it, though. It's very fickle."<p>

In truth, Santana was only half-listening – the Fountain of Youth did not particularly interest her, not when she could watch Brittany talking, as opposed to really listening to what Brittany was saying. Brittany obviously wore no clothing, as she had no need for it. The only cover that she had was nothing but stringy threads of algae clinging to her legs. Naturally, Brittany was unashamed of her bared breasts, and she had no reason to be, as they were perfectly formed. When Santana had first caught herself staring at a naked Brittany, her mouth had quite literally watered, and then she felt ashamed and ridiculous. Gradually, though, Santana began to convince herself that her constant desire to see Brittany signified something important to both of them, and was not just the result of a mermaid's guile. A mermaid's guile alone meant that Santana should have been drowned a long time ago. As it was, she was still alive and breathing, listening as the mermaid told her about the treasures and miraculous locations that so many men had sought for centuries. In comparison to the storyteller, however, they seemed all the more unappealing to Santana.

"You're not listening to me," Brittany complained playfully – Santana never saw her angry or otherwise unhappy. It would be concerning, actually, if it weren't so refreshing.

Santana turned to smile at her. "I was just thinking."

Brittany crawled closer to her, legs dragging behind. As with most aquatic creatures, she moved clumsily on land. "What about?"

"I—" Santana paused, and for a moment she was sure that she had lost her nerve. But Brittany smiled brilliantly at her, her eyes sparkling like the high sun on faraway waters, and Santana swallowed her apprehension, as she had done innumerable times before. As she had to. "I was thinking about you." At Brittany's questioning gaze, she continued hastily, "I've been thinking about the reason why I've followed you ten times to the sea. And I will always return if it means I can see you."

Brittany's smile softened and then faded, as if she understood, albeit slowly, that Santana was trying to say something serious. Santana breathed in deeply through her nose, the salt-tinged breeze tingling in her nostrils. "My heart has always belonged to the sea. And I know that you are the sea. My heart is yours, Brittany; it's yours for the taking."

The mermaid stared at her incredulously, and in that moment Santana had never felt more foolish in her entire life.

Then Brittany's mouth turned downwards into a sad, pensive look. "You're a human," she said, and she sounded more confused than judgmental. As if she were not sure how this was supposed to work. "I loved a human once. I wanted to be with him so badly that I tried to take him with me and he drowned. I forgot that humans can't breathe underwater."

"But you remembered that I couldn't…"

"You're different, Santana. You don't understand. My kind, we destroy. I told you it's in our nature. We destroy to get what we desire, and then we destroy what we desire. And yet I don't do that here. I'm always trying to keep you around. I always want to see you." She sighed. "So this is how it feels, to be human."

Santana sat facing her, trying to digest Brittany's bewilderment. "You know I always want to see you too, don't you?" Brittany nodded again. "I think I've always known that I shouldn't expect more, but as long as I can see you…" Santana chooses her words carefully, "I think that would be enough for me."

"It won't be," Brittany said.

Santana frowned. "How do you know that?"

"Because now _I _don't think it's enough." Brittany's voice dropped to a whisper, and this vocal concession in their dialogue emboldened Santana enough to move even closer. A suspicious voice in the back of Santana's head warned her that _enough_ probably meant Santana's violent demise. One like those dozens upon dozens of seamen swallowed up and lost to their selfishness. But there wasn't much regret Santana could spare for that; not in this moment when she was so close, so close that she could feel and hear her breath beating a warm, gentle breeze against Brittany's face. "I wonder what it is like," Brittany murmured, "to be kissed by a human."

Santana supposed that she had a point – being kissed was not the same as actually doing the kissing. "I should repay you for yours," Santana replied. Kissing was not something she was particularly good at, especially since her experience with kissing was mostly limited to when she was drunk or unconscious. But this one kiss, she wanted.

It was meant to be simple; a touch of her warm, dry lips to Brittany's cool, damp ones. She would have pulled away, but a pale hand shot out and grasped her shoulder, keeping her in place. Brittany clucked disapprovingly at the dryness of Santana's lips and wetted them herself with a flick of her tongue – Santana grunted in surprise and her eyes opened briefly to see Brittany's eyes, so serious a moment ago, twinkling at her before they fluttered shut as well.

When they pulled away, Brittany licked her lips. "You humans are so full of earth," she said thoughtfully. "So that was what it's like, hm?"

"You need to understand how you make me feel –" Santana began, but Brittany shook her head, almost sadly.

"No, you need to understand, Santana. I _can't_. I'm not _human_."

Santana's hands clenched into fists as she sat back, resuming their distance. "How would you do this, then? Tell me, because now I'm the one who doesn't know."

Brittany turned to face the open water, her face blank. "When the sea loves someone, she offers one thing, with one asking price."

"What is the one thing?"

Brittany smiled, but the smile held mo mirth. "Rulership of all the sea."

Santana's eyes widened. "But the price?"

"I think you know what it is. You've seen it happen ten times, after all. Santana, the sea has given her love to more men than you could ever imagine. And yet in the end, she can do nothing but destroy them, because there seems to be no way for her to hang on to fickle human hearts. The only way to keep them was to drown them. That's how it is for me and my kind. Don't you see?"

Santana's eyes were narrowed in a mixture of surprised resentment and bewilderment. She was finding it difficult to unravel what Brittany had just told her, but she made an attempt to do so anyway: "So when you said us seeing each other wasn't enough…what did you mean, then?"

Brittany looks down at her fingers, which are folded in her lap. Then she looked up at Santana and her blue eyes bore into Santana's brown ones, bearing down with the intensity of a rogue wave intent on drowning her. Santana actually leaned backwards, apprehensive. And then the corners of Brittany's eyes softened, dampening the blue sparks into a gentle glow.

"When you humans love, don't you want to do more than just to _see_?" Santana's gaze immediately flickered from Brittany's breasts, stomach, and long, long legs… "You want to have them for your very own. In return, you would do anything for them."

Santana merely nodded, as Brittany was now approaching her on all fours, in a manner that was more than a little lascivious. Brittany's knees scraped against the rock, and they both winced – but Brittany ignored the sting and continued to move until they were a mere hands-breadth apart, like before. "So we are kind of the same, after all."

"So does that mean…what exactly does that mean?" Santana asked stupidly, as Brittany's hands came to rest on her knees.

"I'm offering you the chance to rule the open sea," Brittany said nonchalantly, but her eyes were flickering with something Santana wanted to know more about. "Everything the sea can offer."

Something stirred within Santana, but she pushed it down long enough to ask, "And the price? Tell me honestly."

"For twelve years, the sea will be yours to command. At the end of the twelve years, the sea will take you and your life."

All Santana could do was nod. She had expected as much, but at the last, there was one overriding thought. "Wiill we still see each other?"

"The sea will grant whatever you wish. If you wish to see me, the sea will bring me to you." Brittany smiled sadly. "I love you, Santana, and that is how it has to be."

So that was how it would go, then. "You love me." Santana's mind was practically made up, but one last thing made her hesitate. "If I accepted yours…would you accept mine?" Because really, in comparison, Santana had nothing so grand to offer.

Brittany smiled tenderly. "I already have," she said, placing her fingers on Santana's lips. They tingled, and Santana shivered. Her very bones ached to push deeper into Brittany's stroking touch.

"Then I accept."

* * *

><p><em>López reappeared in San Juan in 1699, when he was around nineteen. This was two years after the tenth ship López had sailed on had met its end. This two-year span did not go unnoticed by Noyola, who wrote:<em>

"I could find no story that attempted to tell what López had been doing in those two years. What most of the stories agree upon is that, by the end of those two years, López had become a fearsome swordsman, though as a marksman he was only middling.

He had seized and taken command of his first and only ship in his nineteenth year, and this ship was an Englishman's sloop built in Jamaica, which López sailed alone without navigator or crew until his twentieth year. The _Charity_, as the ship was called, came into his possession when it was docked at Kingston. The crew and captain had gone ashore to indulge in revelry and there was nobody to guard the ship, since every last man thought that the other would take guard duty. So it was easy for López to slip on board in the dead of night, and he spirited the ship away. Most of the stories I heard insist that he did it alone. However, it seems improbable that he could have done such a thing without help from any man, as the ship was outfitted with cannon, and no man, it seems, could have handled the sails and rigging by himself. When I brought this up, however, the storytellers always cast pitying looks in my direction, as if I were a child who did not understand much of anything:

'Haven't you been listening to anything we've said, good sir? It was the devil, or the mermaids, or whatever you like. They gave him control over the sea, and he had the very fishes in the harbor help him move the ship out into open water. He cast out lines and they gladly pulled the ship out of the harbor for him. The gulls and even the ship's rats, they would come and man the rigging. Of course he had help, but he didn't need any man to help him with that, not with all of that other help!'

They succeeded in making me feel a little foolish, I admit, but I am certain that they had had it out for me from the start with their choice of words."

_The story that tells of various creatures helping López to steal the _Charity _also appears in the letters of Joshua Wills, an English sea captain writing to his family in Southampton. He included the occasional story in his letters to amuse his children, and one of these stories described López and his ship:_

"There is a young Spanish sea captain here & they call him the _Demon Boy-Spaniard_ because they say he has eternal youth, is unable to die, & that he has been the Cause of Many a Sinking, including the _Essex_ which was lost two yrs hence. There have been whispers about him in all the ports in the West Indies & they were spread amongst us by the Honorable Lt. Wm. Harrison, who claims to have heard these stories from his men, who in turn heard it from the stories told at Port.

Lt. Harrison tells that the Spaniard is the captain of a ship without any crew, save for the birds of the air & the fish in the sea. He stole the ship, a fine boat with 12 cannon, in the Night from Englishmen who were making merry and were Neglectful of their Posts. The Winds were favourable for the Spaniard's escape, and indeed they say that the Winds are always favourable for him.

With his ship he lures Unsuspecting Pirates and other Seamen, who, believing the ship to be abandoned, draw close & make ready board his ship in search of plunder. Whereupon the Birds descend upon these encroachers, & in the general confusion, the Spaniard engages the foolhardy ones to battle. As they do so, the Sea itself begins to rage, much like a Hungry Beast. A Fearful Storm descends upon those who dared approach the Spaniard's ship, & one by one the Ocean's waves swallow them whole until all have been swept away to their watery graves & both Ships have been licked completely clean. Then the Sea calms. The Spaniard remains, & the Rats on his Ship assist him in transporting any goods & treasures he may want from the Vessel that so foolishly attacked him to his own vessel, & the Unlucky ship, with several blasts of the Spaniard's cannons, is rendered into a sinking Wreck.

They say that the Birds, several flocks Strong, hoist the sails and man the riggings whenever the Spaniard cannot do it himself, & the Fish ferry the Ship when it is Needed. But otherwise the Spaniard is completely Alone on the ship. No man to turn to for advice or company. Nor would he allow for it. He seeks the Sea's companionship & that only."

_López' solitary tenure on the _Charity_ would end only a year later, around 1700, when the sloop crossed paths with the infamous _Bonnie Mae_, the flagship of the English pirate John Kerr._


	4. Of Fish and Men

_**The Curse of Sea And Land**_

Chapter 3: Of Fish and Men

_The most detailed account of the pirate John Kerr is found in _A Modern Pirate's History_ by the pseudonymous Robert Batson. Published in Boston in 1823, it has been largely ignored in favor of the earlier and more well-known _A General Historie of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. _Most scholars agree that the majority of Batson's book plagiarized from _A General Historie_ and other works on pirates that had been circulated in the States. The material that is unique to Batson is therefore approached with a healthy dose of skepticism._

_What we do know of Kerr outside of Batson's work is that he was __born in England, and that he had gone down with his flagship, the _Bonnie Mae_, off the coast of the Netherlands Antilles, although the bulk of his mythos was based in the Carolinas, especially near Charleston. His story, however, was later overshadowed by the much more famous Blackbeard, and Kerr is often forgotten in Blackbeard's wake. Kerr plied the waters of the Caribbean, attacking and ransacking ships for anything that he felt would turn a profit for him; he was certainly not known for discriminating taste, and both Batson's work and other external sources corroborate this. _

_Despite the scholarly skepticism cast upon his book, it is Batson alone who describes Kerr's demise at sea, and there has been some argument over whether his account of Kerr's downfall is true, given that it is the only one that exists. In any case, the account is still of great interest, as a shadowy character called 'The Cursed Spaniard' plays a key role in Batson's story:_

"Kerr's final journey took him past the Dutch West Indies, where he captured a Dutch merchant ship called _Lion_ in a firefight, and had it ransacked and destroyed. On board the _Lion_ was a Dutch merchant with the French name of Du Berry, who was a Jew and dealt in sugar for the Dutch West India Trading Company. Kerr took s captives this man, his slave, and the surviving sailors, with the intention of dropping them off at the island which is now called St. Vincent, and leaving them to the mercy of the fierce natives who still populated that island at the time. However, on his way to the island, he came across a seemingly abandoned ship, as he could sight no one on deck and no flag was flying from the mast. Instead, a great flock of sea-birds were flying around the sails, swarming them as flies to a corpse. On closer inspection, Kerr saw that the deck was not empty after all - there were rats scurrying here and there on deck and on the rigging. Yet otherwise the abandoned ship, which was a sloop of the Jamaican manufacture, looked to be in fine condition, which only made it all the more mysterious.

The crew of the _Bonnie Mae_ urged Kerr to give the order to approach the ship. However, Kerr was opposed to this, saying, 'What need do we have for a ship full of rats?' Some of the other sailors agreed, as they had heard stories of a phantom ship, although in good condition, manned by rats and captained by a Spaniard cursed with eternal life. Yet the majority of Kerr's crew was unwilling to deny any opportunity for plunder, and they prevailed over Kerr and the other naysayers. So Kerr gave the order to pursue the strange ship to see if it had any valuables worth taking.

It would be to his very great detriment. As the _Bonnie Mae _gave chase to the ship, the waters began to get rougher and rougher, and as the _Bonnie Mae_ struggled to sail up beside the other ship, so that Kerr and his men might board it, a great gust of wind sent the ship pitching wildly from side to side, and the sky darkened with the portent of an upcoming storm. Several of Kerr's crew fell overboard, never to be recovered as the sea's waves became uncontrollable. Yet it seemed that the mysterious ship was unaffected by the change in the weather, floating alongside the struggling _Bonnie Mae_ as if the sea were calm. This served to infuriate Kerr and most of his men, who redoubled their efforts to board the ship, although others were frightened and began to protest, saying that the ship was undoubtedly bewitched.

As Kerr was about to set foot on the ship, a figure emerged from below deck. It was a very young man with a swarthy complexion, which characterized the denizens of the Spanish West Indies at the time. This young man, it was later said, was none other than the _Cursed Spaniard_ of whom many stories have been told throughout all of the West Indies. This Cursed Spaniard, it is said, was so called because as a sailor, every ship he had served on had sunk in rogue storms that seemed to follow him wherever he went, and in all of these wrecks he was the only survivor. Once he took command of his own ship, he sailed it alone and without crew. With the help of the sea, which seemed always to grant him many favors, he preyed on any ship that dared to get too close to his own.

At the discovery that the sloop was not truly abandoned, Kerr almost halted, and perhaps it would have gone better for him if he had, but he went forward and drew his sword. At this challenge, the Spaniard drew his, as well. But before Kerr's men could follow him, a monstrous wave rose out of the sea and swept them all away into the water. The force of the wave caused the ships to separate, leaving Kerr alone on the ship to confront the Spaniard.

Furious with his loss of support, and knowing the only way of escape from certain death was to defeat the Spaniard, Kerr engaged the Spaniard in combat. The Spaniard spoke no English, but he was an excellent swordsman, as one might expect from a noble knight of that country. Kerr thought that he had the advantage, as he was armed with pistols and the Spaniard seemed not to use them. But the balls he fired, if they did not miss, only managed to rip holes in the Spaniard's coat rather than injuring the Spaniard. The last time he fired, a ball did manage to graze the Spaniard's cheek, which only served to provoke the young man, and the fight was to the death.

As they fought, the _Bonnie Mae_ was slowly smashed to pieces by the waves, leaving his crew, booty, and captives to the mercy of the sea. Kerr did not see this happening, as his back was turned on the wreckage of his beloved ship. And it was just as well, as John Kerr was defeated and killed with the Spaniard's sword, without knowing that the Bonnie Mae was no more.

Once Kerr fell and the Bonnie Mae had sunk, the rogue waves and winds that had descended upon both ships calmed, and the sun re-emerged as if nothing had happened. Only the wreckage scattered across the sea remained as evidence that anything untoward had ever happened there. At first it seemed that no one aboard the Bonnie Mae could have survived this, but Du Berry, the merchant, survived by clinging to a large piece of flotsam, and his slave did the same. He expected to die, but to his very great surprise, the young Spaniard rescued them and took them aboard his bewitched ship. And so it was Du Berry who later reappeared in Willemstad and told of what had happened to Kerr, which was how this story was passed down and retold here."

_Unfortunately, Batson does not go into further detail about this merchant "Du Berry", nor does Batson tell us how Du Berry ended up in Willemstad. However, extant records of the Dutch West India Company do confirm the existence of a ship called the Leeuw ('Lion' in Dutch), with the owner listed as a Jewish Dutch merchant, Moses __Meijer.__ If Du Berry indeed existed, it would probably not be too much a stretch to theorize that he worked for Meijer, or perhaps he and Meijer might have been business partners. This might explain his presence on the ship when it was captured by John Kerr. _

* * *

><p>Hiram knew that the mysterious boy who had fished them out of the water was a Spaniard the moment he saw his face. The boy watched impassively as Hiram lay exhausted on the deck, all of his clothes soaked through with seawater. His manservant, Le Roy, was kneeling over him, and further across the deck it looked as if Noah and David were just coming to – and they were all just as drenched as Hiram was.<p>

It had all happened so quickly. One moment he and Le Roy had been sitting locked up in the brig with the surviving sailors from his ship – and the next moment the ship had started to pitch violently, flinging the men around like marbles in a box. They could hear the pirates' screams above their heads as the ship pitched and rolled. As if that weren't enough, a great gushing fountain of water punched through the ship's hull, and they would all have drowned if the ship hadn't fallen to pieces afterward, opening up several routes of escape.

Hiram had grabbed onto the biggest piece of floating wood he could find and yelled at the others to do the same – it seemed that only Le Roy, Noah, and David had done so. Hiram's makeshift raft then buoyed him up out of the swirling water and up to the surface. The sea had calmed none too soon after that, and then the Spaniard's ship bore down on them, with the boy himself looking over the railing at them suspiciously before throwing a rope down to him and his three companions.

"Help me up," Hiram mumbled, and Le Roy held out his arm. They got to their feet together and Hiram took an unsteady step forward. "Thank you for your help," he said in Spanish.

The boy looked at him for a long moment, and Hiram wondered if he had been mistaken. Finally, the boy replied in the same tongue, "You should not be thanking me. It's not because of_ me_ that you're still alive."

Hiram frowned, but nodded anyway. Noah and David were getting to their feet, looking around at their surroundings. "Where are we?" Noah asked.

Just as Hiram was about to tell him that their rescuer didn't speak Dutch, the boy answered in Spanish. "You're on my ship, and we're a few days' sail from Martinique." So this boy did understand Dutch, but Noah's Spanish was poor, to say the least. Noah looked questioningly at Hiram, who said in Dutch, "The gentleman said that we're a few days' sail from Martinique." Hiram then turned to the boy, who seemed to be losing interest in them and was beginning to walk away across the deck; John Kerr's body still lay there, and Hiram wondered how he hadn't noticed before.

"May I know your name, sir?"

The boy half-turned, and Hiram, being the very observational sort, noted the boy's dark wavy hair, delicately square jaw, and how his lower lip stuck out in a perpetually childish pout. If not for his darkened, chapped skin, his features – the eyes in particular – would be somewhat too soft for his circumstances, or so Hiram thought. "I am Santiago López," the boy answered sullenly, "and the only reason you are on this ship is because the sea chose not to kill you, like they did to everyone else on that ship. So you really ought to feel special. Who are you, old man?"

Hiram winced at the rudeness, but since this boy had just saved his life, it would not be appropriate to object. He clears his throat. "My name is Hiram du Berry. I was on a merchant ship that had just been a few days out of Curaçao, before it was attacked by pirates. And then your ship came along, and then…" He let his trailing silence speak for itself.

"Who are your companions?"

"This is my manservant – Le Roy, come here." Hiram beckoned the man forward. Le Roy's appearance was that of the typical commodity of the African slave market; he was initially brought over to work in the sugar plantations in Sint Maarten, but Hiram had taken a liking to the slave and offered him a position as a personal attendant. "Le Roy," Hiram repeated as Le Roy stepped up and bowed a little at the waist.

"Where did you buy him?"

"Curaçao. From a French slave merchant."

"And those two?" The boy pointed at Noah and David, who had crept up to stand behind Hiram and Le Roy.

"Sailors that were with me," Hiram says quickly, "Noah and David." Of their origins Hiram was not quite sure – Noah was a Jew, Hiram knew that, and he seemed to be completely Germanic, but David, it was said, was a Cossack who had ended up in the Low Country due to wanderlust.

The boy – Santiago – looked at them without really looking at them; he seemed to be avoiding eye contact altogether. Frowning, he nodded curtly and turned on his heel.

"Wait," Hiram called after him; Santiago only stopped when he reached Kerr's corpse.

"Throw him overboard," Santiago said to them, indicating the body. "Strip him if you must, but the pistols will be of no use to you right now, as he used up all of his ammunition." He picked up the cutlass that lay next to the corpse. "Once you are done with that, old man, tell your sailors to set a course for Willemstad."

"Willemstad?" Hiram's heart leapt in relief. So they were going back to Curaçao, which would be a much better landing spot than where that John Kerr had intended to drop them off. "Very well."

David moved to strip the corpse of the coat and waistcoat, the latter of which had gilt thread woven into it. Noah took the shoes, which were of excellent leather and had a fine silver buckle – he took them more for the buckle than for the shoes. Both of them took the empty pistols, and after they had stripped the body of everything they wanted, Le Roy picked up the body and pushed it over the railing. There was a far-off splash when it hit the water.

"How can only two of us run a sloop of this size?" Noah grumbled when Hiram told him where they were headed.

"Get the old man and the slave to help you, then," Santiago snapped, as he had apparently overheard even from a distance. "And if you know anything about me, you'd know I've been on this ship alone without needing anyone to help me."

Noah was about to say something about not knowing what was so special about Santiago anyway, and that he didn't have to take orders from a child, but Hiram gave him a warning look. "It's his ship, Noah," Hiram said. "He saved our lives. We'll do as he says."

* * *

><p><em>In 1700, the island of Curaçao was a <em>_large, prosperous, and well-defended free port, open to the ships of all the European states. Merchants offered good prices for sugar that was re-exported to Europe and also sold large quantities of manufactured goods to the colonists of all nationalities in the New World_. _Noyola set foot here in 1717 while still pursuing the legend of __Santiago __López, albeit reluctantly due to his highly nationalistic tendencies. His search was not entirely fruitless, although he later wrote that he did not consider the trip worth taking after the fact. In any case, this is what he found: _

"My guide led me past the numerous docked boats lining the harbor until he stopped abruptly and pointed at one dock in particular. It was currently occupied by a Dutch vessel, as one would expect, but my guide turned to me and said, 'In the early days, this is where the _Charity_ would dock. This was her home port.'

'Indeed?' said I. 'So you are telling me that López was under the protection of the Dutch before he was under the protection of the Spanish!'

'This is true,' my guide insisted, and he told me that before López was called before the Viceroy, he had fallen in with a subsidiary mercantile of the [Dutch West India Company] that had agreed to buy and sell the goods that López had obtained from the ships he had sunk in his wake, and they might give López a cut of the profits from the sales should the haul prove to be particularly lucrative. 'In short,' my guide said, 'he really began his privateering for them rather than for the Spanish Crown.' My guide even took me to see their buildings on the harbor, which are still standing in Willemstad to this day, and those buildings still house the same shipping company – under a different name, or so I have been told."

_Noyola, possibly due to his disdain for everything non-Spanish, does not disclose the name of the alleged subsidiary mercantile in his narrative. However, with the aid of records currently in the possession of the University of Amsterdam, it is possible to narrow down potential candidates for the identity of the organization that López allegedly worked for._

* * *

><p>"The kid is a pirate!" Noah had concluded when they first discovered the trove of goods – sugar, tobacco, fabrics, precious metals and other luxuries, not to mention European manufactures from ships coming into the Caribbean from Europe – in the <em>Charity<em>'s hold. Santiago knew that they knew what was in the hold, and surprisingly, he didn't seem to care. As if he trusted that they wouldn't be able to turn him into the authorities. Not that they knew which authorities to turn him in to.

"If he were a pirate, what would he be doing going straight to Willemstad for everyone to see?" Hiram argued. "I think that the lad is under somebody's protection, there has to be some excuse he's gotten that makes his scavenging legal. Perhaps he has a letter of marque. That would make him a privateer. And no, Noah, we will not be asking him if he can spare us some of his profit. He took us on out of complete goodwill, and we are repaying him by helping him take this ship back to Curaçao, where we'll be back in friendly territory."

"This is stupid," Noah complained, but then quieted when Santiago strode past, pointedly fingering the hilt of his rapier. The boy had not spoken more than a few words each day they were at sea, unless it were to order them to adjust the sails or something of the like. The rest of the time he spent pacing the deck, staring out at the water – or he would brood at the wheel, which he rarely used; sometimes he would let Noah or David steer if they had a mind to set a course. But when Hiram tentatively broached the subject of knowing which direction to sail – or what if they hit the doldrums? – or what if the winds were unfavorable? – Santiago motioned him over to the railing. "Look down, old man," he said. "Don't worry, I won't push you overboard – I'm not like that. Look down, look into the water and tell me what you see."

Hiram looked, and could not believe his eyes. The water was clear enough that he could see the ship surrounded by an escort of large fish; a very large escort, and they were prodding the ship along its route, like numerous shepherds to one very large sheep. "How is this possible?" Hiram exclaimed.

"Because the sea wills it," Santiago said, as if it should be obvious. He pointed upwards. "And do you see those seabirds? If I am unable to man the sails by myself, they help me. And the rats, too," he added, as one skittered past their feet.

Hiram looked at him with a mixture of apprehension and awe.

When Santiago resumed his pacing, Hiram told the others about what he had seen once the boy was out of earshot. "I have never seen the fish do such a thing, for any ship," he said.

David and Noah went to look at the fish for themselves and were suitably impressed. "He might be a pirate, but there's something special about him, definitely, if the very fish are going to push his ship along every time we go off course. Who is he, really?"

"The sea loves him," Le Roy said, and Hiram felt that that said it all, really.

They arrived in Willemstad the very next day. "Get off my boat, then," Santiago said curtly when Hiram tried to thank him. Noah cast one longing look back at the ship – most likely for the treasures that he knew were inside it – as they disembarked.

Just as the four men took their leave of the _Charity_, a swarthy young man with close-cropped hair ran past them and up the gangplank. They began speaking in rapid-fire Spanish – Hiram distinctly heard Santiago call him "Mateo" and say something about charging less for something that had been ruined by the water. Or something along those lines. Mateo was not alone, though. Hiram saw a familiar face following him – "William!" he cried out, and the man stopped in his tracks.

William was an employee of another Dutch mercantile – which would be stronger rivals to Moses and Hiram's company if they were not all under tight control of the Dutch West India Company – the Sylvester- Van der Gruyt mercantile. As it was, their relationship was merely amicably strained (it had been much worse before), and William was the most pleasant of the rival employees that Hiram had met.

"Hiram! They said your ship was attacked by pirates." William looked at Le Roy and the two sailors, speaking so quickly that his words nearly tripped over each other coming out of his mouth. "Wonderful to see that you survived and made your way back here. How did you escape? Wait, you can tell me later. You need to report your return, immediately. They need to know about the loss of the _Leeuw_."

"Yes, we barely escaped. The _Charity_ took us aboard."

"Really? The _Charity_?" William seemed surprised. "Sorry, forgive me my impoliteness. It's just that young Santiago never seemed to be one for company. Sometimes it seems to me that he would rather let people drown in shipwrecks even if he had the choice to rescue them, because he loathes human company that much."

"It's true. He managed to defeat the pirates and—" Hiram stopped, wondering if he should continue. The whole situation was mysterious, if not bordering on the completely supernatural, and if William did not know about Santiago's strange behaviors by now, Hiram did not need William thinking that he was crazy – "Wait, you know the boy?"

William nodded. "He works for us…" His eyes narrowed. "I should hope that that is nothing to you, Hiram."

Hiram, having been in the business for nearly two decades, knew a business secret when he saw one. The polite thing to do was not to ask questions, even though he had many. Such as, why did the boy not fly a Dutch flag, if he sailed under the auspices of a Dutch company? "Of course. My regards. As you say, I will go at once to the proper authorities to report the loss." So, he thought to himself as he waved Le Roy along, he was right to think that someone had been providing the boy with some sort of legitimization. Of course, it was not a little surprising to discover that the 'someone' was Sylvester and Van der Gruyt's company.

* * *

><p><em>Of the potential companies examined, the Sylvester-Van der Gruyt trading company – which was one of the bigger subsidiary mercantiles, given their personal connections to the Chamber in Amsterdam –oversaw a sizable merchant fleet under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company. Included in their payroll was the owner of a ship named <em>Caritas_. _Caritas_, of course, means 'Charity' in Dutch. The records containing the _Caritas_ were dated anywhere from 1699 to 1701; all of the extant documents from 1702 and later never mention the ship again. _

_It is assumed, therefore, that __López, if he had ever worked for __Sylvester and Van der Gruyt, had apparently left the company during or after the year 1701. _

* * *

><p>The company seemed none too pleased that Santana hadn't been able to salvage anything other than four men from John Kerr's ship. "Surely the Englishman had a great deal of booty, especially since he had just ransacked the <em>Leeuw<em>, and who knows how many ships before that," William said. "The Leeuw was on its way back to the Old Country, I'm sure it had a good inventory."

"The sea spares what she spares," was all Santana usually had to say in reply. William didn't seem to like that explanation very much, nor did his bosses, but considering what they knew about her tactics.

Sylvester and Van der Gruyt had been the first to offer a price estimate on the goods Santana had taken on her first scavenging – and she had worked with them ever since then, because they had very good estimates. Having grown up poor, sometimes she was overawed by the enormous amount of money that exchanged hands sometimes, and wondered if it was really necessary. "Save it up," William advised her. "That's how the wealthiest people on this island came to be wealthy." He had quite the penchant for speaking the obvious. Not that Santana wanted to be wealthy, not really. It would be nice, although…

Santana was only on land until nightfall, when she boarded the _Charity_ alone and set sail again. William and the others were used to her tendencies by now, so they couldn't say anything. She lay on the deck once she was out on the open sea once more, listening to the lapping of the waves and the indistinct murmur of the current bearing the ship. The moon passed overhead on its nightly route, as usual, and somewhere in the interim, Santana fell asleep.

Then, the murmur of the current changed from hazy and indecipherable to something more coherent. Santana awoke from her doze, thinking that she heard words. Words, and then her name. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the railing of the ship, peering down into the water, which was pitch-black where the moonlight could not reach. Santana waited for the moonlight to pass over the water until it fell on a very familiar pair of shoulders and a flash of golden hair.

"Brittany," she called out, her other hand fumbling for a lantern. The mermaid swam into the circle of light thrown out by the lantern, her hand pressed against the hull of the ship. At Brittany's touch, the ship stopped its gentle rocking and was completely still – the water surrounding it was completely unmoving, like a mirror.

"Come down here," Brittany said. The moonlight and the lantern-light caught hot blue fires in her eyes, both beckoning Santana to come. Without even thinking – because there was no need to, because this was Santana's sea and this was Brittany – Santana put down the lantern and flung off the coat she'd been wearing to ward off any nighttime chill.

She swung herself over the railing and into the water, and the moon's image on the surface exploded into a million stars.


	5. El Encanto Del Mar

_This is a very brief interlude to tide you pirate!Santana + mermaid!Brittany fans over while I work on _I Knew You'd Be Beautiful_. Originally, this was the opening scene to Chapter 4, but I am justifying cutting it out and making it an interlude because it was little harder to fit it into the "historical" narrative, so to speak._

_I'm glad you all enjoy the story._

_**The Curse of Sea And Land**_

Interlude: El Encanto Del Mar

"Teach me to walk, Santana."

The request was surprising, as Brittany clearly had no intention of ever spending enough time on land to warrant walking. She wouldn't survive for very long, not even if she was mere inches away from the surf line, as they were now. "Why do you want to learn?"

"As you can see, I have legs," Brittany explained patiently. She motioned to the pale, long limbs stretched out in front of her, sunshine casting its sheen on the damp skin. "Why do I have them if I don't use them? I can't move around on land like you do."

"But you don't have to. You're a creature of the sea, you were made to swim," Santana replied. That was more than obvious. "Even though you have legs, you wouldn't last very long out of the water."

Brittany pouted, her legs wiggling and leaving serpentine patterns in the wet sand. "Doesn't explain why I have them, though. And I can still breathe air; I just breathe under water better. You humans can't even do that. I don't understand why."

Santana had to agree, it was a mystery. It wasn't as if everything needed a reason, but still, it was a valid question. But she wasn't about to tempt fate by asking how long Brittany could actually stay out of the water. It all seemed so pointless when she thought about it. "Does it particularly interest you, what we humans do?"

"Not all humans." Brittany smiles slyly. "Just you. Just for you." That was all Brittany really needed to say to have Santana stand up and brush the sand out of the folds of her clothes. She held out a hand to help Brittany up.

"All right, then. I'll teach you."

Brittany looked at the proffered hand and frowned. "I think it's going to take more than that to help me up." Especially if her legs could not support her, and of course she still didn't know how to make them do it. Santana huffed out a small chuckle.

"Here, let me." She took a few steps over until she was standing in front of Brittany, and placed her hands on Brittany's arms. The contact made her extremely aware of the contrast between their skin - Brittany's smooth and slick, Santana's dry and rough. Brittany's legs drew themselves up, bending at the knees. Santana's hands slid down until they reached her sides, which were, as always, gloriously bare; pale and firm with bone and muscle. She tried not to stare too long at Brittany's breasts, even when her thumbs brushed the soft skin underneath, and her eyes strained from the effort. Brittany made a pleased noise when Santana tucked her forearms under Brittany's shoulders, and braced herself to lift Brittany to her feet. "Ready?"

"Yes." Brittany's eyes twinkled at her. Santana smiled back.

On the way up, Brittany's hands scrabbled for purchase on Santana's own shoulders as Santana pulled her upright. Her legs were already buckling before she could get her feet under her; Santana quickly adjusted her grip so that now her arms were locked tightly around Brittany's waist, holding Brittany upright.

"Now what?" Brittany asked, and Santana shrugged.

"Let's get you on your feet."

It was harder than either of them expected. Brittany was completely unused to putting weight on her lower limbs, as such a thing was mostly unnecessary underwater. Santana took on most of Brittany's upper body weight, which settled against her as she coaxed Brittany to be patient, to put one foot in front of the other. Brittany smiled through it all, wrapping one arm around Santana's neck and shoulders as Santana's feet gently nudged Brittany's feet forward, step by halting step.

After a while, Santana felt her hands wicking the dampness off of Brittany's skin, like parched soil swallowing drops of rainwater. Brittany hadn't said anything about that, but she was starting to droop a little, like a plant wilting under the sun; and Santana knew their time was up. She directed their steps towards the water as quickly as possible, and she knew it was the right decision when Brittany's eyes lit up in relief once they were knee-deep in the water.

Brittany turned and slipped out of Santana's grasp to dive headfirst into the water, but their feet tangled in the process and Santana lost her balance, falling face first into the shallow water. When she broke the surface, spluttering, she felt Brittany's arms go around her and pull her into the clear water a little deeper until the waves came up and lapped at Santana's shoulders. It was Brittany's turn to hold Santana upright in the water, her tail steadily treading water beneath them.

"Thank you," Brittany breathed into Santana's ear, her lips wet again as they pressed against Santana's jawline. One of her hands trails across Santana's cheek and down her throat, onto her sternum. "Next time I'll be able to walk myself into the water."

"You're going to practice walking without me?" Santana pretended to pout, but it was difficult to even think about pouting, or even joking around, when Brittany's breasts were pressing up against her own. Her hands slid to find purchase on Brittany's back.

Brittany sighed and didn't answer the question, instead leaning in and resting her chin on Santana's shoulder. The essence of salt bathed the air around them. "I know it's bad, but I can't wait," she admitted in a low voice.

"For what?"

"When I get to keep you, for real," Brittany said, and Santana felt a shiver go down her spine. She knew what Brittany meant. And she knew that Brittany understood her shivering wasn't good shivering. "I'm sorry, Santana. I didn't mean to say it…"

"It's all right," Santana muttered. She was uncomfortable with how much it actually bothered her: somehow she wasn't ready to die, even with nothing else to live for.


	6. In The Service Of The King

Song I listened to on repeat while writing: 'He's A Pirate', from the _Pirates of the Caribbean_ soundtrack. It won't necessarily enrich your reading experience, though.

_**The Curse of Sea And Land**_

Chapter 4: In the Service of the King

Santana had never left the sea's side during the two years between the last ship sinking and her theft of the _Charity_ from Kingston. By then, she was infamous. Even with all of her precautions, word of _El Maldito López_ had already spread throughout all of the Caribbean ports. It had been bad enough before, but now _everyone_ knew her. Her reprieve should have been the obvious lack of survivors who knew what she looked like and who could tell stories about her. But the San Juan natives knew who she was, and certainly there were plenty of mental portraits of her going around the ports.

Her portrait as a boy, of course. A boy with a swarthy complexion, no facial hair to speak of, and a natural pout. A boy cursed with eternal youth, or so the stories said. Some of them, at least. They were inconsistent when it came to describing exactly how her curse manifested itself. Eternal youth, or constant maritime misfortune – no one could quite agree on which one it was.

Even so, Santana continued sailing. People were still afraid to let her on their ships, but she laid down an ultimatum – do what she wanted and no harm would come to them. The sea would obey her.

She didn't think she was going to survive if she strayed too far away from the water.

The sea gave her gifts. Sometimes, freshly wrecked ships would literally wash up on the shore for her, bearing all of their untouched treasures – as if plucking fruit from a tree and handing it to a lover.

Of course, treasure was nothing if you did nothing with it. By process of elimination, Willemstad, Curaçao became her home port. The Dutch were the most ignorant of her reputation and therefore were the most welcoming when it came to doing business. Santana didn't really understand how this could be, since even the British and the French knew about her by now, but she would take what she could get. That was how she fell in with the Sylvester-Van der Gruyt trading company, as they were more than happy not to ask questions as long as they could turn a profit.

* * *

><p><em>By 1702, the story of the <em>Caritas_ and its mysterious captain had reached the ears of the Governor of Santo Domingo. When he heard of López' exploits, particularly against British ships – by now the sinking of the HMS Essex was popular legend – he expressed interest in meeting López, despite his advisors' misgivings. _

_As expected, Noyola's dogged retracing of López' travels led him to Santo Domingo, where, after much questioning and occasional bribery, he managed to set up a meeting with a certain Don Carlos Gutierrez y Alvarado, who Noyola claimed as a close friend of the Governor at the time that the aforementioned Governor met López. His description of the meeting ran thus:_

"Don Gutierrez received me hospitably, which I was glad of, considering the mild hardships it had taken me to obtain an audience with him. Although he was very far along in years at this point, he was lucid and answered my questions well and ably.

'My friend, the late Governor, wished to see Don López, after hearing reports of a young Spaniard that was capturing and sinking French ships in our waters,' he said. 'It was difficult, for none dared to find him and pass on the Governor's invitation.'

'But the Governor did have an audience with him. How did he manage that?' I asked.

'There was a fine sailor – a Carlos _Jiménez – who finally agreed to set sail and search for _Don López, for a reward,' he replied. 'And it seemed lucky for him that Don López had no objection to being found, because _Jiménez came across his ship not more than a few days' sail away. But Jiménez was too superstitious, as a sailor often is, to board _Don López'_ ship himself to deliver the message. _Don López boarded _Jiménez' ship instead, and received the Governor's invitation with much reluctance, or so it was reported to me.'_

I was intrigued. 'Did this Jiménez have much else to say about Don López?'

'As a sailor, of course he believed much of the stories told about Don López. He said that Don López' ship was unmanned save for Don López himself, and that Don López was a small young man who looked barely over fifteen, by his reckoning. He spoke roughly and sparingly, but agreed to oblige with the Governor's request – on his own time, of course. _Jiménez and his men were, of course, too_ frightened of him to argue the terms too strongly, lest they all be killed. They sailed back and reported all of this to the Governor.'

'When did Don López finally come to see the Governor?'

'Oh, it was many months. The Governor did not even expect him when Don López arrived – he fairly jumped out of his chair in shock when it was announced that Don López had come to see him. I saw him with my own eyes, too; he looked just as _Jiménez had described. _During this time, it was also revealed that the ship Don López was sailing was seen to have several crew members, where he had not had them before.'

Of course I theorized, after having recorded all of the stories I had heard about Santiago López up to this point, that this crew included at least the two Jews and a slave, which a number of accounts seemed to agree on. What they did not agree on was whether the crew had more members than that."

* * *

><p>When Le Roy informed Hiram that the <em>Charity<em> had been sighted sailing into Willemstad, Hiram ran as fast as his legs could carry him to the harbor, Le Roy on his heels.

The familiar ship was docking and anchoring when Hiram reached the waterfront; Mateo was already there, helping the young Spaniard with the ropes and asking, in loud Spanish, about what Sylvester and William could expect from the current haul. As he spoke, he glanced over and saw Hiram approaching. His eyes – still strangely soft, but darker around the edges, narrowed in recognition.

"Might I have a word with you?" Hiram called out to him in Spanish, as calmly as he could, given that he was quite out of breath.

The boy Santiago muttered something to Mateo, who shrugged and started going up the gangplank as Santiago descended it. "So it's you. What do you want, old man?" he asked, barely bothering to spare a look at Le Roy, who came up next to them.

"When do you sail?" Hiram asked. He tried not to sound too desperate, but the boy picked up on his tone and scowled.

"Where do you think you are going in such a hurry?"

Hiram sputtered for a few seconds, wordless, before Le Roy finally spoke up for him. His words were succinct. "My master is ruined. We cannot stay here anymore."

Santiago cocked his head to one side, confused. "Ruined? What do you mean by that?"

"I've been removed from my post with the Company," Hiram said hurriedly. "Some of my rivals brought base accusations against me, and my business partner would not support me against them. In fact, he threw me out. Thanks to William, I haven't yet been reduced to rags and begging, but I feel his kindness wearing thin and I've no one else to turn to. The Sylvesters aren't pleased with him doling out charity without their permission."

The boy looked unimpressed. "And so I was your last resort? You know who I am and what people say about me. Were you really that desperate?"

Hiram practically threw himself at Santiago's feet. The boy was startled; even Le Roy seemed surprised at the sudden action, although he quickly followed suit. "Please! Consider my words. There is nothing left for me here, my reputation is in tatters. I can't stay here any longer, not with this wrong done to me. It would kill me. Please, take me aboard your ship. I'll do anything."

Santiago turned away slightly. "Stop begging, old man. It's unattractive." His eyes flickered back and forth suspiciously between Hiram and Le Roy. "What, exactly, have you two been accused of?"

When neither of them answered, Santiago saw their obvious hesitation and rolled his eyes. "You won't tell me? Very well. How about this? If I promise not to ask you, then I will refuse to answer any questions that you ask me."

"Of course," Hiram said hastily.

Le Roy looked less enthusiastic about that condition, but said nothing, since it clearly was not his place to say anything.

"And one more thing, old man," Santiago said, folding his arms across his chest. "If I take you aboard, who are you going to bring with you? Because, in my experience, you don't travel alone."

Hiram looked down at the ground. "You're right," he said, after a long pause. "Noah has been looking for a ship to take him on, but none of the ships he looked to board would take Jews."

"The one who insisted on calling me a pirate?" Santiago didn't look offended, since he couldn't really deny the less-than-honest means by which he procured his goods, and he obviously knew it. In fact, one might have said that the idea mostly amused him at this point.

"Er – yes, that one. That's Noah."

"And the other?"

"David usually goes where Noah goes. Sworn brothers. They have been since their first sail together as boys."

Santiago shrugged. "You probably ought to ask if they'd be willing to work under the Spanish flag."

Hiram was surprised. "What? But I thought – I thought you were – are you still working for Sylvester?"

"I'll be leaving the company very soon," Santiago replied. "This was my very last shipment for them. I sail directly for Santo Domingo after Mateo and I settle accounts." He frowned at Hiram. "If you and your men are serious about joining me, you had better be ready by sundown."

* * *

><p><em>Noyola then asked after the details of the meeting between López and the Governor, taking care to loftily praise his interviewee's memory, despite the man being well along in years at this point.<em>

"I asked the good Don Gutierrez if he had seen the other crew members that he had mentioned on López' ship with his own eyes. 'No,' he admitted to me. 'They were mostly Jews and slaves, so they stayed on the ship and did not presume to accompany him. They would most certainly have been harassed if anyone knew they were Jews, but Don López volunteered that information to us freely. He did not fear for their lives. In fact, I believe that he could not have cared less if they had.'

'Quite, quite…but mostly Jews and slaves, you said?' I queried.

'Well, one of them was a [Cossack], or so it seemed to us,' said Don Gutierrez. 'He actually accompanied Don López to the meeting with the Governor. A massive fellow, he was. He could barely walk under the doorframe without hitting his head on the door panel.'

I nodded. 'So, may I ask if you were present when Don López met with the Governor, yes?'

'Not in the room with them during the conversation. But I was waiting outside of the room for them to finish, with the Cossack. And after they had left, the Governor called me in to let me know some of the details.'

'Was the private meeting the occasion when he offered the letter of marque to Don López?'

'Yes. Don López, according to the governor, initially seemed reluctant to accept the offer, but the governor gradually swayed Don López' opinion with noble words, and Don López himself, having had some time to think about it, agreed to it. He spoke for his small crew, as well, and said that he himself would handle them if they could not be trusted.'"

_As for almost everything surrounding the story of Santiago López, Noyola's account of his meeting with_ _Don Carlos Gutierrez y Alvarado is the only record of the conversation between López and the Governor. Aligning this account to the rest of the timeline, then, the letter of marque was probably granted to Santiago López in late 1701. This would explain his absence from the Sylvester-Van der Gruyt records from that year onwards. _

* * *

><p>"Master Hiram, the captain wants you."<p>

Hiram looked up to see Mercedes, the slave girl that they had discovered below deck that night Santiago had let him and the others onto the _Charity_.

The brief explanation of how Mercedes came to be there was this: the_ Charity_, on its way back to Willemstad, had passed by a slave ship under mutiny by its cargo; the crew of the ship, sorely outnumbered despite having the advantage in weapons, had tried to flag down the _Charity_ for help. Upon the _Charity_'s approach, however, the seas immediately grew violent, and the slave ship capsized, effectively halting the mutiny. Santiago did manage to rescue the only survivor, the slave girl Mercedes, who was bound for the French sugar plantations at Saint-Domingue. In gratitude for her rescue, or so it seemed, Mercedes remained aboard the _Charity_ to offer what services she could. Surprisingly, Santiago allowed her to.

What was more astonishing to Hiram and the others was that Mercedes was allowed to sass Santiago without fear of retaliation. She called the young man 'captain' in a way that didn't suggest the respect that usually came with the title. And Santiago took the attitude in stride; it was as if he was more or less entertained by Mercedes. Hiram supposed it was a nice reprieve from the constant fear and loathing and indifference that Santiago seemed to attract everywhere he went.

Santiago was at the wheel when Hiram approached. "You called?" he asked.

"How do you feel about some death and destruction?"

Hiram gaped at him. "I'm sorry, what?"

"This is your life now, old man," Santiago said coolly. "You wanted to come aboard my ship. Now you know that I will be sailing under the Spanish flag, and you should know now what the Spanish crown expects from me."

"I know," Hiram said quietly.

"Do you regret it?"

The former merchant looked down at his hands, raw from work. Noah and David had taught him a few things so that he would not be completely useless on board the _Charity_. The persistent pain in his limbs from this exertion should have been more than enough to justify regretting his decision to flee the loss of his reputation in Willemstad. Instead, Hiram merely shrugged his shoulders, and winced. "I know that Noah doesn't regret it."

The younger man had been surprisingly excited about the whole situation, as he somehow equated piracy, or privateering, with wealth and freedom. However, Santiago had set Noah and David straight on the less savory part of the whole business. "If you don't know how to fight and win, the best thing for you to do is to hide below deck," he had said. Not to be outdone, however, the two young men immediately set about training themselves with swords, nearly taking each others' heads off in the process. Le Roy would watch them intently in lieu of taking part.

They hadn't had occasion to fight anybody, as they had not passed any ships worth preying on yet, but Hiram knew that it was only a matter of time.

"Good to know that you don't have opinions, old man," Santiago sneered. But before Hiram can get offended, however, the boy continues, "That's fine with me. The others have enough opinions to go around for all of us –"

A shriek from the ship's bow interrupted them. It was Noah, and he sounded equal parts excited and alarmed. "Mermaids!" Noah shouted, drawing the attention of the others on the ship, pointing to several small moving figures that were some distance away. Judging from the reactions, nobody knew what to do.

"Well, damn," Santiago muttered. He swung the wheel in the direction opposite of where Noah was pointing. "Go and tell that idiot to move away from the railing. I don't want him falling into the water because a mermaid charmed him into coming with her."

Hiram nodded quickly and went to the fore of the ship, where Noah, David, and Le Roy had gathered. "Step back," he said; Le Roy immediately obeyed. However, Noah and David did not back away from the railing. They were too busy trying to get a better glimpse of what Noah proclaimed to be mermaids.

Santiago appeared behind them. "Old man, look after the wheel," he ordered Hiram. "Or get your man to do it." Le Roy immediately bowed and left to do so, but Hiram and the others remained where they are. "What's the matter with you fools? Never seen mermaids before?"

"I've sailed for years, and no, I've never seen one," Noah retorted. "They're rarer than you think." Obviously he was starting to spend too much time around Mercedes, if he was going to be this impertinent with the captain.

David merely grunted.

"Then you must have heard the stories about what they do to men," Santiago said. His Dutch had improved to the point that he was able to communicate with Noah and David directly, instead of through Hiram translating his Spanish. "If those are mermaids you are seeing. It could be driftwood for all you know."

"As if we have anything to fear," Noah replied cheekily. "We know what you are to them, _captain_. You are their favored one."

That stung Santiago. "As if that means anything, since I wouldn't object to them drowning you at this very moment."

While they were talking, however, the sea calmed and the winds suddenly vanished. The _Charity_'s sails dropped limply, and Santiago cursed in Spanish.

"So it seems you were right. Those are mermaids." He strode towards the railing, pushing Noah to the side. "Move away. You and the others, go below deck. Don't come any closer."

"But you just—"

"Now!" Santiago barked. "Old man, make him listen to me."

Hiram grabbed Noah's arm. "Come on, Noah. You said it yourself, the fellow knows mermaids. He knows what he's doing. David, go help Le Roy. He might not know what's happening."

But before any of them could move – Hiram had managed to drag Noah a few inches away from the railing – a silky voice pierced the still, calm air, speaking words that none of them knew but could still understand. "So this is the one?"

Hiram felt a shudder run down his spine. Noah's eyes looked like they were glazing over as they all froze in place.

Other voices joined in. "I thought she had better taste than that."

"Right. A poor specimen of a man."

Hiram could see Santiago's shoulders tightening. He was obviously irritated by those rude statements, although the three men could not see who was speaking them. Noah surged forward, but a swift hand knocked him backwards. "I said _stay back_, you fool," Santiago snarled.

Santiago's harsh words seemed to knock the glaze right out of Noah's eyes as he hit the deck. But the voices didn't stop. "Oh, are you hiding somebody from us, young one?" the first voice teased, overly sweet. "Don't hide them. Tell them that we don't bite."

"You need to leave," Santiago retorted.

"We were just curious," the voices protested. "We wanted to see Brittany's new one."

That seemed to irritate Santiago even further. This name 'Brittany' apparently meant something to him. "Leave, I said," he growled.

"What an unmanly tone you are taking with us," observed the first silky voice. "But – since you insist, we will obey. But we also came to tell you something."

"Well, you're telling me something now. Are you done?"

"No, not yet." The voice remains calm and smooth, undisturbed by Santiago's rising temper. "We heard that you were in the area, and wanted to pass on a message. Apparently, you're a _special_ pet of Brittany's."

Hiram and Noah remained still, raptly listening to the conversation. Noah obviously wanted to see the mermaid's face, but Hiram kept a firm grip on the younger man, preventing him from getting up and looking over the ship's railing, just as Santiago had ordered him.

"I don't understand why that twit keeps falling for humans when we all know you'll be just like all those other men she's chosen," the voice continued. "It's surely fun to toy with the likes of you, we've all done it before, but she actually _feels_ for you – and you aren't even the best specimen the dirt can offer."

"Silence," Santiago snarled. He turned away from the railing, but the voices called out after him and he made no move to walk away.

"You humans are all alike! You think you can take whatever our sea gives you and escape us. But don't think that, just because that silly twit is an absolute fool for you, we're not going to come for you when your time comes. You won't escape. If Brittany spares you, we won't spare her. And we'll come for you, we will."

Santiago whirled on them. "Leave!" he shouted. His voice went up in his anger, until it sounded almost shrill and feminine. "That's enough."

The ship suddenly rocked violently to one side; Hiram and Noah were toppled over onto their backs. They let out shouts of surprise, but Santiago's footing was sure and he remained upright. Hiram looked up to see him still staring over the railing, but the tension in his shoulders had not lessened. "They're gone."

Sure enough, after that minor shock, the wind had picked up again and the sea was no longer as flat as a fine glass mirror. The _Charity_ was moving again. "Can we get up now?" Noah snapped. Santiago did not reply, as he strode past the two men, heading for the ship's wheel.

"Well, at least we know it's true that the captain associated with them." He remembered the stories that he had somehow forgotten ever since he'd become more closely acquainted with Santiago. As he hadn't seen what they looked like, he had no idea how to describe them.

Noah quickly got up to look over the railing, but he saw no mermaids. They were indeed gone. "Damn," he muttered. "I missed them. No thanks to the _captain_."

"It was for your own good, Noah," Hiram chided. "You heard what they said to him."

"The captain's tiny and scrawny," Noah retorted, flexing his impressively muscled arms. "Certainly I would have impressed them a little bit more."

Hiram shook his head, as if he sorely doubted that. While Noah spoke boldly, Hiram was sure that neither of them had missed the sinister elocution of the mermaids' smooth, musical voices. They had the loveliest tone, if once could get past the menace evident in their words. These mermaids definitely had absolutely no intention of seducing the young captain, or even any of his crew; they had clearly come to jeer at him and threaten him alone.

But who was this Brittany?


	7. Travels In The Old World

I realized that I had Hiram call the ship "Charity" instead of "Caritas", which I had originally named it. Of course, I could just justify it by saying that Hiram is just calling the ship by the meaning of its name because technically he's thinking in Dutch.

Also, apparently some readers might have been rendered uncomfortable by the version of Brittany in this story. She's a mermaid; of course she's not going to think like a regular human.

Also, you can thank BlackShield for pushing me into finishing this chapter. I recommend you read her newest story, _Sweetest Thing_.

This is the second to last chapter, not including the Afterword.

_**The Curse of Sea And Land**_

Chapter 5: Travels In The Old World

_Between 1702 and 1707, Santiago López' notoriety grew in leaps and bounds. Most of the stories of the privateer's exploits, which Noyola records enthusiastically (if not entirely accurately) in his manuscript, and the accounts from English (and, much more rarely, French and Dutch) sources, date from this period. _

_Notably, this time period coincided with the War of the Spanish Succession, which took place between 1701 and 1714. López' victims were mostly French ships during his years with the Sylvester-Van der Gruyt company, he began to target more English ships once he began serving the Spanish government. However, that did not stop López from devastating the French pirates that still lurked in the Florida Keys to attack Spanish shipping lines – an effort that won him the praise of the Governor and later the King._

* * *

><p>By now the crew of the <em>Caritas<em> was more or less used to the fearful, suspicious stares of people whenever they came into port – mostly Spanish ports, now. Due to the war going on, they were slightly wary of sailing into Dutch ports – although such a thing didn't matter to Santana, who went where she wanted. While avoiding Willemstad out of a grudging accommodation for Hiram, she would still sail into Sint Eustatius every now and again, and order Hiram to conduct whatever business needed seeing to.

The thing was that Santana was not used to handling wealth like regular people did. She had no real monetary investment outside of the upkeep of the _Caritas_ and her own basic needs. Hiram, on the other hand, insisted that she learn how to look beyond that. Having been a merchant, it was exactly the sort of thing the old man would be a natural at, especially since he was determined to earn enough money that would support a living – back in the Netherlands, perhaps, or maybe back in Curaçao, if the scandal that dogged him in Willemstad ever disappeared – and leave this sailor's lifestyle. It was a way of keeping him occupied and out of her business, so she let the older man appoint himself as her accountant of sorts. "Now they're calling you a _Don_, so you are as good as related to the King," Hiram said to her, "and the King's favor is with you. How can you accept his gifts if you've no way of keeping them?" These 'gifts' included titles and lands in Spain, which, as Santana had no intention of appointing an heir, would revert to the Spanish Crown anyway after her death – so she had requested that they keep it as collateral in the unlikely event that she would incur debt to the Crown.

Ultimately, there was no point for her to be too involved in business and money-making. Of course she needed to eat as much as anyone else did, but privateering as a source of income was more for her crew's sake than for her own, as she was sure that they planned on living much longer than she did. She could have all the money in the world and it wouldn't matter; she'd gotten along this far without it, and she would continue to do so, as long as she stayed on the sea. Hiram could take all of the excess earnings if he wanted to, so far as Santana was concerned.

Tonight, the _Caritas_ was in open water, sailing east. The stars sparkled overhead, and David was nodding off at the wheel, although it didn't matter because the current would carry them where they wanted to go anyway. Santana sat near the bow of the ship, watching the ship's prow bobbing up and down. Finally, she got up and walked over to David, shaking him awake. "Go get some sleep," she growled, giving him a little push. "I'll take this."

Once David was gone, Santana resumed her waiting, this time with her hands on the wheel. When the ship slowly stopped rocking and became completely still, she took a lantern and walked to the starboard side of the ship, peering over the railing.

The light bounced crazily off the surface of the water; Santana caught a brief glimpse of blonde hair and she inhaled the breath that she'd been holding. "Brittany?"

Brittany swam into view, her pale shoulders emerging from the water's surface. Santana hesitated before pulling off her coat and boots, fastening a rope to the railing, and then shimmying down the rope and into the water. If she jumped into the water, someone might hear the splash and get too curious for his own good.

The water was cold, but Brittany's arms went around Santana almost immediately, her face burying itself into Santana's shoulder and working some strange warmth into her body. "What's wrong?" Santana asked, her hands gripping at Brittany's wet shoulders. Usually Brittany greeted her more happily – tonight she looked less than happy.

"I know the others went to see you," Brittany mumbled. Santana's eyes fluttered to the rhythmic beat of Brittany's tail treading water beneath them.

Santana nodded stiffly. "If by the others you mean some of your kind…they did."

They bobbed up and down in the water in silence for some time, like a cork. "I'm sorry for what they said."

"Were they telling the truth?" Santana asked quietly.

Brittany looked pained. "I don't know." Her hands gripped at the soaked fabric on Santana's back, and her eyes peered desperately into Santana's. "They said that I was stupid for thinking that you would be different from all the others. They told me you would be just as unfaithful as all the others, because no human wants to die when he has everything he wants."

"You thought I would be different from the others?" Santana clenched her jaw. Part of her wanted to reassure Brittany that those other mermaids were spewing ignorant nonsense. But they had a point. It was true that Santana was only human. There would always be times when she would think about the way her life would end because she loved Brittany, and it would be wrong to say that she never regretted it. Mermaids were inhuman, fearsome and cruel; for all her beauty, Brittany was no different.

Besides, Santana already knew that she wasn't the first human whom Brittany had loved like this, if she remembered correctly. And, fidelity or not, her fate would not be any different from his.

"Santana," Brittany murmured, one of her hands loosening from the back of her shirt to slide around and gently palm Santana's cheek, "Please say something."

"Don't listen to them," Santana replied quickly. She bit her lip, resolving to look Brittany in the eye. Even without much light to speak of, her eyes still glowed blue, as if Brittany had her own special light that shone behind them.

"But…"

"Remember how I continued to chase you, even after all of those ship wrecks?" When Brittany nodded, Santana continued, "I had my chance to turn my back on you then, but I didn't." She closed her eyes briefly. "And I'm not going to start now. I couldn't even if I tried."

Brittany looked at her, a delighted smile growing on her face. For a brief moment, Santana wondered how often, if ever, Brittany heard those sorts of words. Of course, she supposed that almost any human would promise anything for what a mermaid's love could win them, unless they were a saint - and wondered if Brittany actually believed her when she said that.

"I love you, Santana," Brittany told her, kissing her and stroking back the dampening black strands of hair from Santana's face. "Believe me, I do. Wait! Don't," she adds quickly when Santana stiffens at her words. "Don't hide from me. Don't be mad at me. Please."

Santana shook her head. "I'm not."

Well, it's true: she isn't, not really.

Just – troubled.

* * *

><p>"Everyone knows I have Jews on this ship," Santiago told Hiram, as Cádiz came within sight of the ship's deck. "Therefore, it's not advisable for you and the other to disembark. I will let you take the ship to your home country with any spoils we have, considering it will be more use to you and the others than it will for me."<p>

Hiram was flabbergasted at this sudden generosity, and also worried because the ship seemed to only really be controllable when Santiago was on board, or so it had seemed all this time. "Are you certain?"

"Of course I'm certain. Unless you want the warm welcome that the Spanish usually extend to Jews?"

Of course not. Hiram didn't want to unnecessarily endanger himself or Noah (and by extension, Le Roy). Mercedes would probably escape their notice. David might be tolerated, since the Spaniards might believe him to be member of the Eastern Church and thus at least a Christian. "I see your point."

"The ship will take you where you want it to go, but only to one destination. Unless I tell it to, it won't stop anywhere else. You cannot control the ship anymore than you can control the seas; if I want it to, the ship will leave without you. Keep that in mind and take care that you don't do anything foolish."

"But what about you?"

"I am going to Seville to meet the King," the boy said. He withdraws a neatly folded document from inside his coat. "I received this correspondence from the Governor, and I've decided to humor him and His Majesty and take him up on the offer of a royal audience. What do you think?"

"Oh, by all means do. It's not as if I could stop you, _Captain_," Hiram replied dryly. "But you will be returning to the West Indies, won't you?"

"To be sure. It's my livelihood, and I do believe it's yours now, unless you intend to stay in your country. What do you and the young men say? You should probably ask them, eh?"

Hiram frowned. "Why does that concern you?"

Santiago rolls his eyes, still oddly soft despite being such a hardened personality. "Because then the_ Charity_ won't know if it should come back to get you. You'd have to arrange your own transportation if you wanted to return to Curaçao."

"I think that could be arranged regardless of whether the ship came back for us," Hiram replied, still taken aback.

* * *

><p><em>During Noyola's interview with Don Carlos Gutierrez, the old man always spoke glowingly of López' exploits against the English. At the time, Spain was still weaker than its allies and opponents alike, and there was only so much that López could do on his own. Still, López apparently distinguished himself enough to warrant recognition from the King of Spain himself; with the King's favor and his success as a privateer, López slowly began to accumulate vast wealth. He was still widely known as El Maldito throughout the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, even after gaining recognition and a title from the King. Noyola wrote:<em>

"Don Gutierrez told me that word would come back to the Governor concerning the English ships that Don López captured and sank; by his count, England had lost more than a dozen ships in the span of a year and several months to mysterious sudden storms that raged in and out of season. It certainly was a successful record.

'Even so, there were still men who told the Governor that Don López was not to be trusted because he had Dutch Jews manning his ship, so he would not confront Dutch ships,' Don Gutierrez said to me. 'The Governor trusted Don López nonetheless, and recommended him to the King every chance he had. The King was pleased with what the Governor told him about Don López, and was even willing to grant a royal audience with him, should he ever come to the Old Country.'

'So he did?' I asked.

'Yes,' said Don Gutierrez. 'Don López first sailed to Spain in the fifth year of His Majesty's rule, and the King received him warmly. In fact, Don López was twice in the presence of His Majesty.'

'How is it that I never heard of this?' I asked. 'Perhaps the King asked for a private audience?'

'But of course,' was the reply. 'The Governor told me that Don López had requested this privilege, and the King granted it.'"

_Noyola went on to claim that Santiago López was granted the second surname, Viguera, during his first meeting with King Philip V in Seville, a royal audience that Noyola dates to 1705 in his manuscript. The King had asked after his parentage and Don López spoke of his father, the shipwright Ignacio, but he remembered nothing of his mother. Moved, the King offered to grant his mother a surname posthumously, along with the titles that he intended to bestow on Don López for his service to the Crown during wartime. From then on, Santiago López was styled López y Viguera._

_The record is silent on what might have transpired during López' alleged second meeting with the King, although by this time he apparently owned parcels of land in Spain, granted to him as royal gifts. Perhaps the gifting had occurred during that time. However, it seems unlikely that López ever visited these properties during his sojourn in the Old World; he left them as collateral in the event that he should incur a debt, which never happened. Don Gutierrez confided to Noyola that he believed that López had disdained the property that the King had given him because it was too far inland, away from the sea. _

_After his disappearance in 1710, all of it had inevitably reverted to the Crown, as López had not named an heir, and the transaction was mostly forgotten after Philip's death._

* * *

><p>Santana had never learned to ride a horse, which the King found amusing, and he insisted that '<em>Don López<em>' try to learn. It took a good amount of glaring and growling, "If it pleases Your Majesty, I have no need for a horse, surely you understand I would rather be on the sea rather than on land," for him to drop the subject. He did insist that Santana wear a better sword, going so far as to take a finely gilt rapier from one of his companions and gifting it to her. "We'll have none of that British stuff here, won't we?" he said, when Santana admitted that she was still using a small sword she'd taken from a British ship. Thankfully, they were still too afraid of _El Maldito _to take it away from her.

If she was being honest, Santana hated Seville and everybody in it, and could barely wait to return to Cádiz. The moment she did, she immediately made her way to the beach at La Caleta. It was early evening and high tide would not peak until a few hours later.

Hiram and the others were probably well on their way to Rotterdam, if they were not there already. She was not overly concerned about their whereabouts; the _Caritas_ would come if Santana needed her to.

Santana sat on the beach and watched the men tying their boats up for the night. Other than a few curious glances at her, they mostly minded their own business, as one by one they left the beach, making their way back to their homes. Darkness fell rapidly after that, the horizon bruising pink, then orange, red, and finally purplish blue. During this time, the tide had been coming in and coming in, until it almost reached her seat in the sand, reducing the dry part of the beach to a mere strip.

She lay herself down on the sand, watching the sky darken above her until she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. It had been a trying couple of days, what with the travelling back and forth from Seville to Cádiz taking up most of her time and energy.

So she slept.

And with the tide came the night; then the sea stirred and Santana awoke and lifted herself up on her elbows, just in time to see Brittany emerging from the water. To anyone else, it would have been rather shocking, seeing a nude woman walking stiltedly out of the tide – but Santana was used to this. Brittany's gait was still unsteady, coltish, but Santana's lessons over the course of their meetings had done her some good. Just because Santana was extremely careful to conceal these trysts from Hiram and the others didn't mean that they never happened.

Brittany approached and threw herself on the patch of sand next to Santana, the tide and foam trailing at her feet like the train of a dress. Her damp, cool arms reached out to Santana and pulled her close. Santana felt the strange heat spiking in her blood at the feeling of Brittany's bare breasts and thighs pressing into her side; the same strange heat that emerged whenever Brittany touched her, both in water or on land.

"There you are," Brittany said, as if she'd been looking for Santana. Which she didn't have to – she always knew where Santana was, so it seemed.

Her hands moved quickly, so that Santana's fine shirt (it had to be fine because of her audience with the King) was slipping down her shoulders and her hair was loosened and falling around her shoulders before Santana could fully grasp what was happening. When she did, she quickly moved to unbelt her sword and guns and pull her trousers down (she refused to wear the fashionable leggings, which the King's nobles disapproved of).

Brittany's hands were far more experienced and confident than Santana's were, trailing in all the carnal places that made Santana's muscles tremble with desire. It all reminded Santana of the old stories that she had heard in her youth, about the countless kingdoms that crumbled to dust because of this, taking thousands of lives with them. She could see that destructive power in Brittany's eyes, which glowed despite the blackness of night time - it would have been as dark as pitch except for the very faint twinkling of the city's torch lights behind them and the thick blanket of stars above them. As it was, all Santana could see were the weird bluish glow in Brittany's gaze, her blonde hair colored silver without sunlight to make it gold, and the shadow of her outline. She got the impression that Brittany could see her better than she could see Brittany; frankly, it made her all the more aware of how fearsome Brittany could be, even in a moment like this where Brittany was tenderly running her hands over Santana's body, her kisses light as feathers.

She must have stiffened at some point, despite basking in the pleasure, because Brittany immediately drew away from Santana's body. "What's wrong? Are you all right?" Brittany asks, sounding anxious and concerned; that helped Santana relax a little more.

"I'm fine," Santana replied quietly, covering Brittany's hands with her own.

It wasn't the first time they had been intimate; they had done it often enough for Santana to know that she craved it. To be sure, the first time was extremely awkward at the start, with Santana being completely confused and embarrassed by Brittany's frankness about the whole thing - however, Brittany's experience was what finally helped put Santana at ease. After all, Santana wasn't the first person she had charmed like this, and who knows what she had done with them (and let them do with her) before they died? The thought rankled, but apparently Brittany had enjoyed the experience. _This is my favorite_, she had said, the first time she had lowered her naked body onto Santana's. _But since you're girl-shaped, like me, it'll be a little different. Don't be afraid, I'll show you. Just feel this._

The raw feeling of Brittany consumed Santana's thoughts constantly after that - not that it hadn't been that way before, but it had deepened and transformed. It was exacerbated by the fact that their meetings had become less frequent due to the necessity of hiding them from Hiram and the others. This wasn't easy and required much of planning and subterfuge, considering Brittany couldn't afford to be away from the water for too long.

The sand under her body was warm and now turned sticky with the sweat on her skin, goosebumps standing at attention as Brittany's hands passed over her skin in circuitous routes, her fingers lingering and sinking into all the dark, secret places. Brittany, in her usual confident way, ignored all the layers and went straight to Santana's core, working her deft hands until Santana cried out – a tiny, mewling noise - and collapsed in on herself, like a house built from a deck of playing cards that she'd seen at a Carnival celebration in Santo Domingo. It had only taken one breath for it to all fall apart – she was the house and Brittany was the breath of air.

She panted, her hands clutching the damp skin of Brittany's back as she rolled them over. Brittany's eyes were still glowing – there was a momentary flash of excitement as Santana hovered over her. Her skin was damp with sweat and not from ocean water, and was alarmingly hot; a far cry from its usual coolness, but Brittany didn't seem to mind. "This must be what fire feels like," Brittany purred. It wasn't the first time she'd said something like this – and as usual it occurred to Santana that Brittany didn't know what fire felt like, but how could she explain real fire better than this heat?

The desperate, pleased sounds that echoed from Brittany's throat as Santana touched her were the closest to human that she ever became. Soon, her pale body pulled taut, and then snapped – her head lolled against the sand, limbs loosened as if in a swoon. Santana managed to drag them closer to the ebbing waterline – the tide was beginning to go out – despite her shaking limbs. Brittany was smiling up at the sky – Santana lay next to her, not caring that the wet, syrupy, and shockingly cold sand was smearing onto her hair and on her bare skin.

Brittany turned her head to look at Santana, her eyes hooded and sleepy. "I love you," she whispered.

Santana looked back at her, something like sadness and happiness all rolled into one settling in her stomach. She took a deep breath. "I love you too. You know I do."

However, Brittany's smile was small and sad. "I know, believe me. But there's only one way you can prove it."

Apparently, the words of the other mermaids had disturbed Brittany more than she had previously let on. Santana swallowed.

"I know that, too."

"You're scared," Brittany murmured, reaching to press her palm against Santana's cheek. "You're scared to be with me."

Santana rolled her eyes a little. "You think so? Of course I would be – didn't the others tell you that's why men try to go back on their word? Why they think you're stupid for – for pursuing me?" It was all coming out now. "I'm going to die because of my promise to you, Brittany. My time's running out, and I don't know if I'm ready for that. If I die," Santana mutters, her head moving to look back up at the stars, "You'll go on, find someone else. Just like you did before me. And I don't know what death is like, but I know I'll probably never see you again. That's all I need to know about it."

"Santana…"

"I love you," Santana said, her gaze fixed on the night sky. "And I will prove it to you."

"But do you know that I love you?" Brittany asked. She sounded desperate. Her hand slipped from Santana's cheek and moved to grasp Santana's hand.

"You gave me the sea for ten years," Santana answered quietly. Dully. "I think that's good enough."

Brittany shook her head, the sand making squidgy noises under her head. "But it's not the sea you wanted," she said sadly, turning her body so that she could drape herself over Santana. Her hands, streaked with wet sand, stroked Santana's hair as they lay with the surf lapping mere steps from their bodies. "You just wanted me."

And that was the truth of the matter.


	8. Return To The Sea

Last chapter. There will be an Afterword, which will serve as an epilogue and will hopefully make you feel better after this.

_**The Curse of Sea And Land**_

Chapter 6: Return To The Sea

_By 1709,_ _Santiago López y Viguera had all but vanished from the oral and written record, forgotten as quickly as he had risen to infamy.__ Despite Noyola's efforts to determine his whereabouts between 1708 and 1710, the oral stories on which he depended in order to write his manuscript had all but dried up, indicating that__ López had probably retired from privateering in the King's service during the years leading up to his disappearance. Some suspected he was already dead, but on returning to San Juan from his interview with Don Gutierrez, Noyola was told otherwise:_

"The same old men who had known Ignacio the shipwright, and with whom I began my investigation, told me that Don López never returned to San Juan, but stories of him in Santo Domingo and Havana would occasionally come to their ears up until his ship left Havana for the last time [in 1710]. By this time he was quite wealthy, or so they said; he wore clothes of the finest weavers to be found in the Old Country (even if the clothes themselves were not of the current fashion) and the sword he wore, according to the gossip, was given to him personally by the King, taken from one of the nobles present in the royal audience, and of course the nobleman was glad to give it without protest.

'And what did these stories say?' I asked.

'Oh! Nothing but reported sightings of his ship,' the old men told me. 'And many say that he sailed alone. No crew, just as it was in the beginning.'

I found this interesting because that meant that the crew members that the earlier accounts spoke of, if indeed Don López had employed them, were no longer present on his ship.

'So he vanished on his way to Seville, and he was alone?'

'That's so.'

* * *

><p>"Where's the old man?" Santana demanded, when the <em>Caritas<em> suddenly reappeared in Cádiz with only Hiram's man, Le Roy, and Mercedes the former slave girl, on board. "And the others? Have they decided to stay behind, then?"

Le Roy nodded. "The master wished for me to be free to find our own fortunes. He chooses to stay in the Old Country, as did David and Noah for the time being." He didn't look terribly excited about being a freedman, Santana noted.

"That's all he had to say?"

Mercedes, sassy as usual, rolled her eyes and bustled past Santana. "Captain, surely you expected him to return? Master Hiram be pleased to know he is missed by you, if only he could know this."

"Not at all," Santana retorted. "I've managed just fine without him, and without you two. If he's so set on you two finding your own fortunes, the moment we get to Curaçao I'm dropping you off and leaving you behind. You shouldn't need me, or this ship, to manage that."

Le Roy looked only mildly disturbed at her outburst. Mercedes huffed, as if Santana was proving her point that – somehow – she did miss the company of that stupid old man, and perhaps the other Jew and the Cossack as well.

She didn't bother thinking about whether Hiram or the others would return the favor.

The journey back to Curaçao was uneventful for the two former slaves; the seas remained calm and they remained undisturbed by other ships. However, Santana hardly slept and remained above deck for the entire duration. Brittany did not appear to her, and neither did any other mermaid. Everything seemed calm, everything and everyone except for Santana herself. This calmness was too much for Santana, who almost cried in relief when Curaçao finally came into sight.

"Will that be all, Captain?" Le Roy asked, as the ship came into port. Surprisingly, no one seemed to recognize the _Caritas_ as it sailed in.

"Eh?" Santana snapped. She glared at him and Mercedes, who was hovering behind him. "Yes, fine. That will be all. I don't require your services anymore; as a matter of fact, this will be the last time I come to this harbor. Take what you wish from the ship; as soon as I get the gangplank down, you'll get off my ship, and I would prefer not to see you again."

Mercedes rolled her eyes but bade Santana a quick farewell before leaving the ship. Le Roy merely bowed, and followed Mercedes down the gangplank and into the sparsely crowded harbor without so much as a backward glance. Santana watched them walk away, carrying their belongings, until they had disappeared from her sight.

* * *

><p><em>Noyola's search for details on<em> _López' last days in Havana were fruitless. The various sightings reported to him were vague, and many of the people who might have known of him better, or spoken to him, were either dead or had left Havana years ago. He soon grew discouraged and dejected, especially when I had to return to his base in San Juan due to a lack of funds. _

_Near the end of his manuscript, Noyola vents his frustration:_

"Of all the subjects I could have written on, I choose a man who lived only in stories, or so it seems to me, and I shall be at the mercy of the storytellers should someone challenge the authenticity of my work. A promising venture, when I first began it; but oh, what disappointment is mine now! Perhaps I had been too hopeful to think that I could have revealed the truth of his whole life. Even his service to the King, which should have been the least mysterious of these events, remains vague and my writing rests almost entirely on the testimony of Don Gutierrez, trustworthy though he may be.

"This story of the Accursed Santiago López is intertwined with the unnatural, and of course I speak of the merpeople with whom he was said to have consorted, as well as the claims that this great sailor was in fact a woman. And it is that which frustrates my attempts to prove, or disprove, the veracity of my tale. My audience will not always be credulous sailors, with their old wives' tales and superstitions. I fear that my readers, should I have any, will see this work and deem it a collection of fairytales, instead of an honest, if failed, attempt to discover one of the greatest sailors who ever sailed in the service of the King and great Spain."

_Apparently, Noyola's fear of not being taken seriously – at the time he was still a young historian, seeking approval from his peers and benefactors, and was keenly aware of the tenuousness of his livelihood as such – prevented him from publishing his work, although the embellishment of López' exploits was not his fault; that was the very nature of the stories told about López, and Noyola had more or less faithfully recorded them._

_Noyola never fully recovered from this discouragement; once he proclaimed his manuscript on Santiago López to be finished, he never returned to write on the subject again, choosing instead to find his niche in writing long treatises on the Christianization of Hispaniola for popular consumption back in the Old World. He later moved to Veracruz and there lived out the rest of his life, dying in 1739. _

* * *

><p>It wasn't every day that one woke up and knew he was going to die. But the human mind was capable of many things, or so the philosophers said: and today Santana awoke with the sudden knowledge that, twelve years ago to the day –<p>

Well, she said yes to Brittany.

The weather knew it too, so it seemed. The sky and sea were a strange, dull purple color – rather like a bruise stretching from east to west - as she sailed northeast; she had passed Nassau several days ago and was well on her way out on the open expanse of the ocean. Alone. Not that she wanted Hiram and the others to see this happening, anyway. It was amusing, in a twisted sort of way, to think of her former crew as spending their money, eating and drinking and living without any knowledge of what was happening to her, and not sparing a thought for her either.

What, really, had she been doing with her life for the past twelve years?

Perhaps she should have asked Brittany how was this going to happen. The general consensus was that the mermaids wrecked ships and let the sailors drown; Santana had seen it first hand after all. So, then, she should be prepared to drown, and Brittany would not save her. No, Brittany could not. Santana didn't know if there would be any consequences if she tried to, but surely her fellow mermaids would not let them get away with it – they had warned her. Mermaids were cruel, vindictive; they would kill her if Brittany couldn't. And Brittany still was one of them. She should have no problem letting Santana drown.

Santana took a deep, shaky breath. The sea was rocking a little strongly, nothing she wasn't used to, but she was so tense that it seemed all too ominous. Even the birds and the rats and the fishes had already abandoned her the day before.

"I am afraid," she said aloud to herself, and went below deck.

In her quarters sat a trunk, the only piece of luggage on the ship that had never been moved, or opened by anyone other than Santana; even Hiram had never tried.

Santana opened the trunk and began to change into her newest clothes; all were gifts from the King. The waistcoat was red and trimmed with lace; over that she wore a dark blue coat with deep cuffs and brass buttons; the cuffs were embroidered with gold thread. She put on her stockings over the breeches and tightened her cravat, before sliding on her boots and securing her sword and gun belt.

After all, she should look her best.

She left the quarters and closed the door behind her, before she returned above deck.

Santana took the wheel of the ship. The sea had not stopped rolling, and the wind had gotten stronger. All of these were tell-tale signs of an upcoming storm; it was like watching a play for the hundredth time, with the same actors on the same stage with the same directions.

The only difference being that she was sure she would not survive this.

Of course she had known. Of course she was resigned to it. But she was still afraid. "I am afraid," she repeated to herself. "But why?"

Why indeed.

Would it be painful? What would come for her afterward? She had never been baptized, but even so she had some knowledge of what the priests taught, and she knew she met none of their God's standards. That wasn't very encouraging, either. Hiram had spoken little of his God, and the only noticeable thing he and Noah did was to cease all work on their Sabbath, which Santana found annoying, but Le Roy would pick up the slack and it wasn't like they had to do much anyway.

However, all thoughts of her former crew slipped her mind when she thought of Brittany.

Would Brittany be there? Or would she let Santana die alone, too? Perhaps that would be a good thing; if she were there, she might be tempted to save Santana from her fate, which would indicate that she felt so strongly about Santana that she was willing to risk the natural order of things. But then, Santana didn't want to be alone, even if it felt like Brittany was betraying her.

What Santana did not know scared her in a way that it hadn't for a long time.

The _Caritas_ began to careen off-course (not that she really had a course to begin with? Where had she been hoping to go if she could somehow cheat death? Where could she hide? She couldn't hide forever, she knew) as the waves got larger. The sky broke open and rain began to fall – softly at first, but after a few moments it began to lash at the deck and sails.

Her hair became soaked from the rain, hanging in dripping locks around her shoulders, and she realized that she had forgotten her fancy hat in the trunk.

Santana cursed and gripped the wheel of the ship tighter. Even knowing that it would be futile didn't stop her from doing it.

Suddenly, a huge rogue wave tipped the ship over to one side at a crazy angle. The _Caritas_ struggled to right itself, and when it did, it did so with such force that Santana was thrown off the wheel and she struck the deck with such force that her breath was temporarily stolen from her.

That hadn't happened to her for twelve years.

"So this is how it will end," she murmured, and then she struggled to her feet as the ship pitched and rolled, the clouds and the waves surrounding her and roaring like hungry beasts. They had been waiting for her, it sounded like.

Santana walked – or stumbled – towards the bow of her ship. Behind her, she heard the masts creaking loudly from the force of the sails being ripped off of them. Perhaps the mast would fall on her and she would die that way. "Just get it over with!" she shouted at nobody in particular.

Or maybe at Brittany.

She thought - not for the first time – that perhaps she should end this now, by herself. As soon as that thought crossed her mind, she remembered that her guns were almost useless after having been out in the driving rain, because the powder was now wet. That left the sword.

Suddenly, as if the sea had heard Santana thinking about suicide, a large sea serpent burst from the water, closest to starboard, and reared its head. It was dark and scaly, as one might expect, with teeth and tongue and it had her ship surrounded.

"Are you being serious right now?" Santana yelled, drawing her sword anyway. So they were pulling all the stops. Or maybe the serpent was just there to watch and make sure she didn't get out of this alive. God knows how many sailors before her and tried to get out of it.

The serpent lunged, but its head stopped well short of Santana, like it wasn't quite sure that she would taste good. Its body undulated under the ship, and the ship bucked off the water and landed with a crash. She watched as the ship began to splinter down the middle, the deck splitting and tearing in half.

Santana had enough. "Where's Brittany, you _piece of shit?"_ she shrieked, waving her sword around crazily as she clung to the port side railing. "She's the only one allowed to kill me! She's the only one allowed to watch me die! The rest of you can go to hell! Go to hell!"

The serpent paused, considering her words, but the storm did not pause, and lightning cracked the sky. Suddenly, the serpent seemed to agree with her and plunged back beneath the surface. This caused a series of powerful waves and a whirlpool that succeeded in sucking the stern clean off the ship, with the aft side of the ship following closely behind. Fear stabbed at Santana, and she gripped the railing tighter, clenching her eyes shut.

"Let go, Santana."

Santana's eyes flew open. Brittany was sitting in front of her, clearly unaffected by the roiling of the sea and the violent pitching of the ship, or what was left it. Her human legs were crossed in front of her; her tail was nowhere to be seen. "Let go of the railing, Santana," Brittany repeated, her voice the loudest thing Santana could hear, even over the storm.

"I'm…I am afraid," Santana replied. Her voice hitched, now that Brittany was here. The sword dropped from her hand.

"I know. I'm sorry." Brittany sounded mournful. "But you have to let go."

Santana swallowed. The ship shivered dangerously. "I know I do." Now they were here and no matter how much both of them regretted it, it had to happen. It was impossible to change it now. The sea knew her too well, and it wanted its debt of love paid.

"You need to let go so that you can hang on to me, Santana. So that I can hold you." Her voice was pleading and Santana chanced a look into her eyes. They still glowed that familiar unnatural blue, and Santana could not read them well – had never really been able to - but Brittany had kept her word for all of these years and Santana could not help but trust her. Even if this was the last time she could.

Her hand unlatched from the railing and reached for Brittany, half fearful that Brittany would disappear like mist once she got there. But Brittany did not disappear – in fact, her own hands reached out and clasped around Santana's shoulders the moment Santana touched her. Santana was so relieved that she hardly noticed the ship being dashed to pieces around them.

"Hold me, then," she whispered against Brittany's naked chest. It didn't matter if Brittany heard her, she did it anyway.

"I'm sorry," Brittany cried. "I'm so sorry." Like she was trying to understand how Santana felt, struggling against the idea that love meant death. Humans didn't think like that. Humans shouldn't think that way, but now Santana was trapped and Brittany, maybe, was trying to understand this somehow.

Santana shifted in her arms. "Make it quick. Please." Her fancy clothes, all soaked through, suddenly felt like cold, wet lead weighing down her body, dragging them both down. The _Caritas_ – or what was left of it – began to roll over to one side, overwhelmed by the strength of the wind and waves. Santana felt their bodies slipping, hanging in gravity as the ship made ready to tip them into the roiling water.

She didn't have enough time.

She would never have enough time though. Not really. Not when it came to Brittany. Even if Santana hadn't gotten involved in this, she wouldn't even get _one_ century. Humans didn't get that luxury. Thoughts like this made her feel like she'd made the biggest mistake of her life, falling in love with someone who would move on and find someone else to prey upon, and live on for centuries without her.

But she loved Brittany, all the way to this bitter end. Why else would she be here?

"It's too late," Santana croaked. Her face was still pressed into Brittany's skin. Brittany's arms tightened around her.

"I love you, Santana," Brittany said, her voice clear and strong and wet. Just before Santana clenched her eyes shut for the final time, she saw a flash of scales rippling across Brittany's skin. "I won't let you be alone. I'm here."

The deck of the ship gave one final heave, and they fell into the water.


	9. Afterword

Thanks to all who read and reviewed. To the reader who asked if I read Borges – yes, I've read some of his poems. Bonus Appendix at the bottom of this chapter.

Soundtrack while I was writing:

'Safe and Sound' (Julia Sheer cover) - Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars, 'Florence' - Crooked Still, 'Vous êtes mon cœur'- Gungor

_**The Curse of Sea And Land**_

Afterword

A few months after I had finished the initial draft of this book, I received a phone call from a colleague from the University of Tübingen, with whom I had collaborated with on a book on Juan de Caravajal, one of the first governors of Venezuela. He had recently heard of a few papers that he thought might be relevant to the book, and asked if I would like to hear more about them. Although I was getting ready to publish what I had, I agreed; it couldn't hurt to know what it was.

The papers, as it turned out, contained a short story from an anthology of short stories published in Germany during the Romantic era. The short story was written by one K. Hummel, titled '_Unter Dem Meer'_ ['Under The Sea']. The University of Tübingen had been kind enough to archive a digital copy of the anthology, and I was able to gain access to it in order to read the short story in its entirety.

Hummel's story recounts the adventures of an English seaman called Hudson, who is shipwrecked in an unfortunate accident in the North Atlantic Ocean. Knocked unconscious while his ship foundered, he awoke in a cavern, where he followed a mysterious source of light to a large cavern:

'_The cavern opened up before him, and the light grew until it filled the cavern, revealing a most unexpected sight: a young man lying in the arms of a naked woman. The woman was beautiful, with golden hair and white skin; the man was colored like a Spaniard, dressed in breeches and a coat with large cuffs. The coat was ruined from the salt water, its buttons completely rusted. The cravat he wore was loose around his neck, and he lay still as a stone in the embrace of the woman. The woman's eyes opened when Hudson spoke: "Is he alive?"_

_She said, "Sleeping," and asked him, "What color is the sun?"_

_He told her, "As it always was."_

"_How does the wind blow?"_

_He replied, "As it always blows." _

"_Then we cannot leave." She gazed sadly upon the Spaniard's face, which was as smooth as a boy's. _

_Hudson asked, "Where is this place?" But the woman did not answer him, as she lay down again. He tried again: "Why are you here?" he asked. _

"_Repaying my debt," she answered. "Now leave."_'

Afterwards, Hudson mysteriously returns to the surface while fleeing an avalanche of rock apparently meant to drive him out of the cavern, and is rescued by a Royal Navy ship dispatched to look for survivors. When he recounts his experience to one of the officers, the officer tells him about stories he heard while he had been stationed in Kingston: that there were mermaids in the Caribbean who fell in love with sailors. However, the sailor would inevitably die a violent death as a result; so in exchange for their lives, a mermaid might agree to be imprisoned in human form, barred from roaming the sea forever, and the sailor would sleep and never age until '_the end of days, when the wind ceases and the sun dies_'. When Hudson mentions the young, clean-shaven Spaniard, the officer was reminded of one story in particular – none other than that of the Cursed Spaniard from San Juan, who was lost at sea many years ago.

Hudson, suddenly realizing what he had seen is what the officer described to him, later goes and spreads his story to anyone who will listen. Hummel claims to have heard the story of the Cursed Spaniard from an English sailor, and adapted it for his story.

What was most surprising to me was that, assuming Hummel was being truthful and not merely embellishing his tale for artistic purposes, this account of the Cursed Spaniard and the mermaid – our very own Santiago López y Viguera – apparently had not existed anywhere but among the English sailors in Jamaica, or else Noyola would likely have recorded it. Of course, López had already been connected to the merpeople in the Spanish accounts, but this particular ending to López' story had not been found in Noyola's manuscript.

Granted, it is reminiscent of the theme we see in the legends of King Arthur, Frederick Barbarossa, and the Endymion myth – which, in my colleague's opinion, contributes to the doubt surrounding the veracity of Hummel's claims, since his story was published in 1820; Keats had published his poem in 1818, and Hummel was a known admirer of the poet's work.

However, I cannot think of a more fitting epilogue to this book than this story. There is an undeniable element of fantasy among the history, and I would be remiss if I tried to exclude it entirely. An ending that, by modern standards, is not the happiest of endings, but it brings a sort of resolution to the tumultuous life of El Maldito López that I might otherwise not have had.

-_RBB_

* * *

><p><strong>Appendix<strong>:

**Santiago López y Viguera** (b. 1680, San Juan, Puerto Rico - d. 1710?), real name **Santana López**, was a Spanish privateer. Raised as a boy by her father Ignacio, a shipwright, López was brought up in the ways of seafaring. She joined the crew of a Spanish merchant galleon at fourteen after Ignacio's death.

**Hiram du Berry** (b. 1647, Strasbourg, France - d. 1720, Scheveningen, the Netherlands), was a Dutch sugar merchant, an Alsatian Jew by birth. He was aboard the _Leeuw _when the pirate John Kerr captured, ransacked, and destroyed it.

**Le Roy **(b. 1650? - d. 1712, Curaçao), was the personal slave of Hiram du Berry.

**Noah Puckerman** (b. 1677, Amsterdam, the Netherlands - d. 1735, Sint Eustatius), was a Dutch Jew who served as a sailor on several merchant ships belonging to the Dutch West India Company. He sailed to the Netherlands Antilles on the _Leeuw_.

**David Karofski** (b. 1680?, Warsaw, Poland - d. ?), was a Cossack who traveled to the Netherlands, befriending Noah Puckerman and joining him as a crew member on the Dutch West India Company ship _Leeuw_.

**Mercedes** (b. 1685 - d. 1754, Henrico County, Virginia), was a slave liberated from a French slave ship bound for the Haitian sugar plantations at Saint-Domingue.


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